Saints Need to Take Care of Business in Their Own Backyard

Dec 27, 2015; New Orleans, LA, USA; New Orleans Saints running back Tim Hightower (34) celebrates a touchdown against the Jacksonville Jaguars during the second quarter of a game at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome. Mandatory Credit: Derick E. Hingle-USA TODAY Sports

As free agency approaches in the next few months, the talk has been that the New Orleans Saints will be “aggressive” in signing players to possibly help reach another championship in the 2016 season.

In my younger, naive years; I personally always got a bit more excited about free agency than the NFL Draft, simply because of the fact that you knew what you were getting from a veteran as compared to a fresh-faced rookie.

After having watched over the years, free agency can actually be as big or even bigger of a crap shoot than the draft is.

If there is anything that the past few seasons have taught Saints supporters, it’s that just because you have multiple Pro Bowls on your resume or were on back-to-back Super Bowl teams (like Brandon Browner), that doesn’t always translate to success to the team that signs you.

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While the Saints may want to be aggressive, it could end up being with some second or even third-tier free agents that are out there — with one or maybe two “big” names.

I’m not saying the Saints are in salary cap hell as other sports analysts have, but it’s not like they can afford another Jarius Byrd-like deal.

In fact, they may do better at signing some of their own free agents in order to keep the salary cap and team stability in check.

To shamelessly borrow some lyrics from the famous 1990’s rap group House of Pain:  “The time has come for everyone to clean up their own backyard before they go knocking on their neighbor’s door.”

Here are some of those in their own “backyard” that the Saints need to look at before delving into the free agency pool…

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