David Onyemata (re-sign)
Eli Apple (will sign elsewhere)
Von Bell (re-sign)
P.J. Williams (50/50)
A.J. Klien (50/50)
Andrus Peat (will sign elsewhere)
Drew Brees (re-sign)
Teddy Bridgewater (will sign elsewhere)
Taysom Hill (tender and re-sign)
The key players here are Drew, Bell, and Onyemata... the rest are expendable or replaceable. I really think you can add Kamara and Rankins to this year's list. If so, then they become priority as well. What happens with Jenkins is important too. IMO, we should be able to keep these key players.
These are just a few of the names that are upcoming Free-agents. And, we don't have the money to pay them. Then we have guys like:
Marshon Lattimore (re-sign)
Alvin Kamara (New contract or trade in 2020 50/50)
Ryan Ramcheik (re-sign)
Sheldon Rankins (Extend or trade in 2020 70/30)
Alex Anzalone (50/50 depends on health)
Trey Hendrickson (50/50)
Marcus Williams (50/50)
Lattimore and Ramczyk are the priorities next year. I think AK and Rankins will be decided before then. The rest of these guys are important, but not key to our core unless Marcus Williams becomes more consistent in crucial situations. I also believe we can keep the guys we want next year, the key will be what we have at QB. If we find an answer for that position, we could/should have the core of our team intact.
All of these guys are soon going to have to be paid.
To top all of this off, we have very few Draft resources to begin to replenish the team's talent level. We have holes that need to be filled like WR, TE, OL, CB, LB, DT. And, to make matters worst, we have no monetary resources under the cap to fill all this. We have all of this dead money that is beginning to come due because of the management of Loomis - granted, he has had to do this to keep us competitive - but every dog will have its day eventually. This is the 1st off-season I have really been worried about the state of our team.
Maybe its time to begin to consider a complete rebuild. Drew is not getting any younger, and we have young players on this team that need to be taken care of now, before becoming free-agents. Every year these players play and get better, their prices go up. I really hate the Salary Cap because of this. Certain players command high dollar, and that takes away from the rest of the team. Players that play themselves into 100 million dollar contracts are great to have talent wise, but are really detrimental to the overall state of any team.
What are we to do? I love the idea of going after someone like A.J. Green, but do we really need him? Drew can't chunck the ball downfield anymore like he once did. We have no draft captal to go after high draft picks. Dang.
In the NFL, you don't go through a complete rebuild unless you don't have another choice. It's never been SP and ML's way to wipe the chalkboard and start over. Remember the three 7-9 seasons? That's what our re-build may look like, and that only if we haven't found an answer at QB or we weren't able to keep our team largely intact. I say this and I believe this, but the wildcard is QB. We've rebuilt while competing in the past, but we always had Drew. I'll admit our re-build process could look different without the security of having the best QB in history on the roster during the process.