When the third round of this year’s NFL Draft was over, head coach Sean Payton and the Saints were ready to wrap up and call it a weekend. After trading up to take a tight end at the end of Round 3, the team found itself without any picks in Rounds 4-7.
Still, there were things to do. The Saints got to work reaching out to players they didn’t think would get drafted but they were interested in signing as free agents.
One of those was quarterback Tommy Stevens, a 6-foot-5 bruiser out of Mississippi State who projected to be a hybrid-type player in the NFL, much in the mold of Taysom Hill. Hill has thrived for the Saints in a weird kind of wildcat QB-tight end hybrid role that the team more or less invented.
And with Stevens, they wanted the next iteration of that. Still: There was a problem. Stevens already had a verbal agreement with the Panthers to join them as a free agent in the event he went undrafted. Stevens also already had a relationship with new Panthers offensive coordinator Joe Brady.
Still, Payton wasn’t going to let it go that easily.
“It became my project,” said Payton, who said the Saints first offered to match Carolina’s offer (a $15,000 signing bonus and $30,000 of Stevens’ salary guaranteed).
Then Payton said the Saints tried upping the offer to $144,000 of the salary guaranteed. But Stevens and agent Buddy Baker didn’t budge because Stevens wanted to honor his commitment to Carolina.
Payton says he respect Stevens honoring his word, but wasn’t going to let him get away that easy. So during the final round, the Saints traded next year’s sixth round pick to the Texans for their seventh round pick this year. They then took Stevens.
Again, via ESPN:
“I said, ‘Honestly, I was having some fun,'” Payton said. “‘You had given your word and I respect that. But we weren’t going to lose you. You were going to become a Saint.'”
That was that. No word yet on how Brady and the Panthers feel about all this.
