In addition to re-signing Adrian Arrington, the Saints have also come to terms with long snapper Justin Drescher and backup safety Jonathon Amaya on 1 year $540,000 contracts. Amaya (pictured) is a special teams standout that came to the team in the Reggie Bush trade, and Drescher has had the long snapper job on lockdown the last year and a half. These guys are all exclusive rights free agents, which means they were never going anywhere anyway and were by far the easiest to re-sign. The last remaining exclusive rights free agent is starting center Brian De La Puente.
That’s the good news. The bad news is Adam Schefter of ESPN has reported the Saints are still far apart in contract talks with Drew Brees and…
they will franchise him on Monday if they cannot close the gap. I remain steadfast in my thinking that I refuse to panic until it becomes clear the Saints have to franchise Brees. If and when that happens, I will crucify Loomis publicly for mismanaging this situation. As long as it doesn’t happen, I don’t care if Brees is signed at 11:59pm on March 4th. As long as they can franchise Carl Nicks we’ve got no problems. If their hand is forced to franchise Brees, which essentially most likely costs them Nicks, I will be furious. No one is a better insider than Schefter, though, so my guess is Brees’ agent Tom Condon is frustrated with the progress and he spilled this nugget of information to Schefter in an attempt to put pressure on the Saints’ camp. That’s my theory, anyway. It’s frustrating that things have gotten to this point, no doubt, but as long as the Saints aren’t forced to franchise Brees we’ve got no problems. That’s the same attitude I think all fans need to adopt right now. Let’s not throw Loomis under the bus until the deadline is up and his mismanagement of the situation is clear. Until that point, I think he deserves our faith based on his track record.
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