Cameron Jordan is still a free agent. So is his longtime teammate Taysom Hill. If you've been to a New Orleans Saints game in the last few years (or just made a to-go plate from the hot bar at your local Rouse's Market during football season), there's a good chance you've seen a couple of their jerseys in the crowd. Those are household names in Saints country and seeing either player wearing different colors in the fall would be painful. Losing them and getting nothing back would be even worse.
But the clock is ticking. The deadline for free agent signings to factor into the compensatory picks formula is always 3 p.m. CT on the Monday following the draft. We've seen the Saints take advantage of this loophole before by waiting to sign Jameis Winston and Tyrann Mathieu after the draft. There have been other years they were too eager to sign someone, and it cost them; rushing to ink Andy Dalton in 2022 wiped out what would have been a third-round pick in the 2023 draft. The NFL basically took pity on the Saints and gave them a seventh rounder anyway.
In most years, including this one, the Saints have been too active in free agency to qualify -- in other words, they added more players than they lost, so there was nothing to be compensated for. It's very, very close, but that's where New Orleans is right now. Over The Cap's experts have the Saints with three qualifying losses (Alontae Taylor, Demario Davis, and Foster Moreau) against five qualifying additions in free agency. Signing Travis Etienne Jr., David Edwards, Kaden Elliss, Noah Fant, and Ryan Wright outweighs those departures.
Sure, there's a chance the scales could tip in their favor. But it isn't a strong chance. The Saints would need Luke Fortner's contract to count into the formula, and as a one-year deal worth $2.75 million, it's right on the fringe of where the formula takes notice. If the Saints are going to get a compensatory pick in the 2027 NFL Draft, they'll need Fortner's deal count while seeing both Jordan and Hill sign respectable contracts elsewhere before that deadline (3 p.m. on Monday, April 27). If Jordan and Hill -- both of them, not one or the other, and Fortner has to factor in, too -- don't put pen to paper by that deadline? Hang it up.
Even then, we're looking at maybe a sixth or fifth rounder in next year's draft. This is pretty small potatoes as far as these things go. But with their roster depleted by a series of bad drafts, it's important the Saints get as many swings at the plate as they can. If Jordan or Hill are going to be on a different team this year anyway, you'd like to know there's something coming back to make up for it. Stay tuned.
This article originally appeared on Saints Wire: NFL compensatory picks: Deadline in sight for Saints free agents