METAIRIE, La. ― With the arrival of defensive end James Hall and quarterback Jake Delhomme to the Saints’ Airline Drive facility on Friday, New Orleans finally threw its hat into the free agency ring.
Additionally, the Saints will still bring in defensive end Leonard Little, whose original visit had to be postponed.
A week late?
Thank the NFL for that.
A new league rule states that any of the final four teams left in the playoffs could not sign an unrestricted free agent until one of their own was signed by another team. The other part of the new rule says that the team that lost a free agent could only sign a player to equal the amount of the first year of the contract signed by the former player.
Indeed, free agency might be where the Saints fill their need for a new defensive end, General Manager Mickey Loomis said Friday during a news conference.
On the other hand, despite losing linebacker Scott Fujita to the Cleveland Browns, Loomis said the team is likely to find his replacement already on the roster.
“We have a need at both of those positions,” Loomis said. “But we have some guys in the building, probably more guys in the building at the linebacker position than we do at defensive end. But we also have a lot of draft picks that we get to exercise in April.”
Included in the group in-house are Jonathan Casillas, Stanley Arnoux, Anthony Waters, Jo-Lonn Dunbar and Marvin Mitchell.
“We’ve got a lot of young linebackers in our program,” Loomis said. “Greg (Williams) has said often we’re just trying to get our best three linebackers on the field. Don’t worry about whether a guy fits this description.”
Meanwhile, Loomis will turn his attention to those he knows are coming in for visits.
Hall is an unrestricted free agent from St. Louis who is entering his 11th season. The St. Augustine graduate has been with the Rams for the past three years and this past season, finished with 43 tackles, including 4½ sacks.
Delhomme, meanwhile, has been with the Saints before, playing as a backup for five seasons before going to Carolina, where he started 77 games and started a Super Bowl. He was cut by the Panthers this past weekend and has a visit to Cleveland booked as well as the one to New Orleans.
“I think this is a combination of that exploratory visit along with maybe a desire to sign him,” Loomis said. “We need to have a conversation with Jake and talk to him as he sees himself and how he sees his role and how he thinks that would fit here before we could say we’re willing to sign you.”
The Saints also are looking to lock down multi-year deals with all of the 16 restricted free agents the team tendered, including guard Jahri Evans.
“He’s a high priority,” Loomis said. “Jahri has developed into the one of the best if not the best offensive guards in the National Football League. Clearly we want to keep him here, not just because he’s a great player, but because of the type of person he is.”
Asked to describe how those discussions have been, Loomis said “very positive.”
But while not much has been written about the restricted free agent market, Loomis said he expects it to heat up shortly once the period for signing unrestricted free agents cools down.
“The good news right now is we have a right of first refusal on our restricted free agents first,” Loomis said. “If we elect not to exercise that, there’s going to be compensation attached to most of them and in some cases, some very high compensation. So, we’ll make those decisions as they come about.”
Other news from Loomis’ news conference:
- The Saints and Houston Texans will practice against each other the second week of preseason game provided that the NFL schedules them for a second-week game.
- Loomis said the Saints will find out their opening week opponent during the NFL meetings from March 21-24.
- He also said that training camp will again be in New Orleans and will start roughly the same time it did prior to the 2009 season.
