Don’t look now, but the New Orleans Saints are changing before our eyes. Last summer, they inked superstar wide receiver Michael Thomas to a five-year contract extension. Now they’ve repeated the stunt with running back Alvin Kamara, tying him to the team through 2025.
It sets the stage for life after Drew Brees; signs point to the franchise quarterback hanging up his cleats after the 2020 season, making Taysom Hill (who has a $16.159 million cap hit next year) the favorite to start in 2021. And now Hill knows that he’ll have Thomas and Kamara on hand to make his life a little easier.
That puts Hill in a terrific position to succeed. There aren’t many first-year starting quarterbacks around the NFL who can boast a pair of pass-catchers as talented as Thomas and Kamara, whose presence will take a lot of pressure off Hill’s shoulders. Kamara in particular has benefited from working with Hill on option plays in the past, and it’ll be exciting to see what sort of playbook Sean Payton is cooking up for them.
Let’s not lose sight of what this means for Kamara. He’s now earning top dollar, which is just as much a reward for his past production as an expectation of how he’ll perform moving forwards. Now that he’s recovered from his 2019 knee injury, he figures to be just as explosive and versatile a weapon as ever. He’s poised for a great dubt against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Sunday — his numbers as a runner (54.8) and receiver (67.5) are stronger against them than any other NFC South rival.
In Brees’ heyday, the Saints rarely paid out market-setting contracts to their top receiving weapons. Marques Colston never ranked among the highest-paid receivers. Jimmy Graham was traded a year into his big extension. Kenny Stills and Brandin Cooks were traded before the Saints ever sat them down to talk shop.
But Kamara and Thomas are both viewed differently than any pass-catchers to come before them in Payton’s tenure; that’s clear from the contracts they’ve received. Those two players are going to be the pillar of the Saints offense for years to come. If Hill’s 2021 season goes as well as hoped, he’ll join them.
Who else will still be around for the next phase of Saints football? Kamara is the first big-name 2021 free agent to re-sign with the team, but they have an inventory full of contributors. Defensive tackle Sheldon Rankins (whose restructure helped facilitate Kamara’s new deal), free safety Marcus Williams, tight end Jared Cook, cornerback P.J. Williams, quarterback Jameis Winston, and linebackers Demario Davis, Alex Anzalone, and Craig Robertson all headline next summer’s list of players needing new contracts.
It’s great that the Saints got Kamara’s extension out of the way. Now they have to shift gears and decide which free agent-to-be to tackle next.
