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The New Orleans Saints are in for plenty of change this upcoming offseason. New Orleans suffered another terrible season in 2024, finishing 5-12 and earning the ninth overall pick in the 2025 NFL Draft. This caused Saints ownership to fire head coach Dennis Allen midseason, who has yet to be replaced by a permanent head coach. Although, it seems their sights are clearly set on Philadelphia offensive coordinator Kellen Moore.
Naturally, a new coaching staff will want to tweak the roster to fit the image their new head coach has for the team. That could be tricky.
New Orleans is notoriously loose with the salary cap under GM Mickey Loomis. The Saints routinely enter the offseason with negative salary cap space, only to restructure contracts and make other moves to become cap compliant. This year is no different, with the Saints currently $54 million over the 2025 salary cap.
As such, the Saints need to find ways to maximize their limited cap space. One route they could take is trading away aging veterans who has larger cap hits in 2025 and beyond.
This all leads us to Saints safety Tyrann Mathieu. The veteran free safety is a luxury the Saints can no longer afford. If New Orleans does not trade him this offseason, they will miss their window to get anything of value back for him. Therefore, they must consider trading him this offseason.
Below we will explore three of the best trade destinations for Saints safety Tyrann Mathieu ahead of the 2025 NFL offseason.
The Chicago Bears are by far the best landing spot for Tyrann Mathieu if he is traded this offseason. This pairing really checks all the conceivable boxes.
It all starts with the Bears hiring former Saints head coach Dennis Allen as their defensive coordinator. Allen is obviously familiar with Mathieu over the past three seasons. That familiarity has certainly created some trust between the two men. This could come into play when determining a landing spot in a trade.
That familiarly also means that Mathieu understands the nuances of how Allen’s defensive scheme works. As a result, he could be especially valuable to the Bears as someone who can be a “coach on the field” while installing Allen’s scheme this year.
Mathieu is also known across the NFL as an incredible leader in the locker room. In fact, Patrick Mahomes once said that Mathieu is the best leader he has been around in the NFL. That is certainly high praise coming from Mahomes.
His strong leadership skills, paired with his knowledge of Allen’s scheme, could make him an ideal culture fit for what the Bears want to build. The Bears could seriously benefit from adding Mathieu to help build a new culture under new head coach Ben Johnson.
Intangibles aside, Mathieu is still a productive safety. He could absolutely earn a role alongside Jaquan Brisker, Jonathan Owens, and Kevin...
