Saints 53-Man Roster Moves Are Both Obvious And Curious

Defensive Backs

Jun 10, 2014; New Orleans, LA, USA; New Orleans Saints cornerback Stanley Jean-Baptiste (33) during minicamp at the New Orleans Saints Training Facility. Mandatory Credit: Derick E. Hingle-USA TODAY Sports

The Obvious

-Hey you knew it was gonna be Jarius Byrd, Rafael Bush, Kenny Vaccaro, and Jamarca Sanford as your front runners for safety.

-Safety Pierre Warren’s release wasn’t a shocker considering he had an uneventful camp and preseason compared to last year and although he had a nice forced fumble and recovery negated by a penalty, it was the bad angle/slip and fall coverage for a touchdown just a while later that sealed his fate in the final preseason game.

-The project that was cornerback Stanley Jean-Baptiste is over and what was obvious to the fans(well some at least) last year and this year apparently became the same to the coaching staff, which I prophesied in a recent article.

Baptiste and Warren both combined their effort for the play that sealed their roster fate in the final preseason game leading to a touchdown, but in fairness to Warren it looked like he was expecting Baptiste to push his man outside instead of in.

But it wasn’t just that game that Baptiste did the damage as he left his receivers allowing for scores and in just about every game he looked like someone was throwing a department store mannequin at an opposing player when he tried to tackle them.

The Curious

-Okay maybe it’s not exactly curious but apparently Jarius Byrd is on the mend and NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport said in a Twitter conversation with me yesterday that Byrd is “rapidly improving” and we should “see him soon”….I wonder what Ian’s definition of soon is?

-The Saints let veteran safety Kenny Phillips go after he was thought to be safe like Ashaad Mabry and it was a disappointing end to his comeback after playing at strong and free safety during the preseason.

While that’s disappointing, what’s curious is that it only leaves the Saints with four safeties on the roster and with Byrd battling his injury, along with at some point some swelling in his knee according to NOLA.com’s Kat Terrell, it’s a gamble.

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