Canal Street Chronicles
Kennan Allen and others are still out there.
The New Orleans Saints made a sneaky good signing earlier this week when they signed former Detroit Lions and Cleveland Browns wide receiver Donovan Peoples-Jones to a one-year deal, but do they need to add another veteran to the equation?
Ever since they came out of the draft without a wide receiver, the Saints have been in the market for another target on the outside. There was a lot of speculation over whether or not they’d target someone like Kennan Allen or Amari Cooper, and while that’s still a possibility, they decided to bring Peoples-Jones into rookie minicamp and try him out. It obviously went well because the Saints signed him not too long after, but I don’t think they should be done shopping quite yet.
In my opinion, I think bringing a veteran WR in should be high on their list of priorities despite this signing. Peoples-Jones is a very solid wide receiver, don’t get me wrong. He was an 800-yard receiver in 2022 and had three solid years with the Browns, but the production hasn’t quite been there in recent years, and I don’t know how comfortable you are rolling him out there as your WR3.
With Derek Carr’s retirement, the Saints have opened up a lot more room in their cap. They already had enough money to sign someone like Kennan Allen or Amari Cooper, but now they just have even more room to play with and can feel comfortable about overspending a little bit if they need to in order to lock someone of their caliber down.
The biggest reason I think the Saints need to bring in another vet is not because I think they need one of them to win more games, but because they need to make Tyler Shough’s transition to the NFL as smooth as possible. I’m presuming he’s going to win the quarterback battle, I don’t think you bring a 26-year-old rookie in with a top-50 pick if the plan isn’t to start him right away, and while Chris Olave and Rashid Shaheed are a nice 1-2 punch, he needs a reliable, big bodied receiver who can come across the middle and be exactly where he’s supposed to be. A receiver like Kennan Allen or Amari Cooper is a young QBs best friend, so if they really want to extract the most out of Shough in his rookie season, signing Allen or Cooper is a must.
If the Saints can roll out a wide receiver room that consists of Chris Olave, Rashid Shaheed, Kennan Allen/Amari Cooper and Donovan Peoples-Jones, that would be a very solid room, especially compared to last year’s. Part of the reason I think Spencer Rattler struggled at times last season was because he just didn’t have the receivers on the outside. He made some rookie mistakes, but again, if they really want to see what they have in Shough this year, they need to make more improvements at WR....
