Make it make sense! The New Orleans Saints enter the 2025 NFL season as arguably the worst team in football. I understand that new head coach Kellen Moore will be given some grace by ownership, on account of Derek Carr retiring before even playing for his former Mountain West quarterback big brother. What Moore will soon realize that he is not in Boise anymore. He could have a rough first year.
To make matters worse, general manager Mickey Loomis continues to swing his sword, knowing that he has job security unlike any front office executive in the league. In the eyes of ownership, he can do no wrong. Truth be told, he built this roster on top of a house of cards, one that is crumbling before our very eyes. One of his signings does not make any sense. Why did he bring back Chase Young?
Young has never had a double-digit sack season since coming into the league out of Ohio State to Washington in 2020. He may have been a sensation during his first season in the NFL, but that was during COVID. Young did play well at times during his 2023 campaign split between Washington and San Francisco, but he only had 5.5 sacks last year for the Saints. Now he gets a three-year extension.
Young being under a three-year deal worth $51 million is not how you allocate scarce resources...
New Orleans Saints may come to regret paying Chase Young a premium
The Saints are paying for a player who has appeared in 17 games in a season just once in his professional career $17 million annually for the next three seasons. Young will be making $1 million per game over the next three years, regardless of if he plays in them or not for the Saints. He will be hitting unrestricted NFL free agency again in 2028. By that time he will be 28 and so out of his prime.
Perhaps the hope in all this is the Saints are not going to be paying their quarterback very much for the next few seasons, especially with Carr abruptly retiring. Whether it is Jake Haener, Spencer Rattler or Tyler Shough starting for them under center this fall, all are unproven at the NFL level. All are still under rookie contracts. This may be all part of a bigger plan to draft a player next spring.
While I am all for redemption stories in sports, nothing I have seen out of Young the last few years leads me to believe he will be back to the once-promising player he was coming out of Ohio State. If he ends up carving out a 10-year career as a No. 2 edge rusher on a halfway decent team, that would be a best-case scenario. Sadly, the day and age of him being anyone's No. 1 is completely toast now.
The Saints have to pay somebody, but I think we need to take a long, hard look at Loomis for this one.