Saints [possibly] have 39 million in cap space?!?!

Because what team exactly has loaded up on overpriced FA's and won a superbowl lately?

Its not the way you win a superbowl. You win a superbowl by building through the draft and then, if your a piece or two away fill a few needs. We are nowhere near a piece or two away, so what we'd end up doing is spending serious cash on FA's, while not having built our base yet and we'll fall short. Then after 2-3 drafts have passed those FA's will be gone because of cap concerns but we'll finally have our base. We aren't in the position yet to grab Briggs and Samuel because we don't have the pieces around them to make them successful.

The Redskins and 49ers are very good examples and proof that going after bigname FA's without having a strong team already built through the draft is not a recipe for the superbowl.

The past three superbowl champs? Their entire teams almost exclusively built through the draft. The Colts entire team was drafted.

What should we do with this cap space? Sign one fair priced FA, of which I think Thomas would be, and use the rest to resign key players like Smith, Colston, Faine, etc. You can frontload their deals so we have plenty of cap space when we are finally in the position to plug a few holes with an overpriced FA or two.

I've seen this said by myself and a few other people on SR.com, but I'm gonna say it one more time. We can sign free agents WHILE building through the draft. Building, as the name implies, takes time. If we have the money(and we do) I don't see anything wrong with spending it on some proven defensive veterans to play while we develop our draft picks and also help in the development of our draft picks. No one is suggesting that we become like the skins or dolphins where we base our entire roster around FA or trade away our picks for veterans, we simply want a good defense next year.I think the best way to do that is to sign some playmakers in free agency AND draft the best guys we can. Maybe out of those transactions we'll end up with a least a couple of playmakers on defense. We don't have to be conservative with the cap, one year of overspending a bit isn't going to drive us into "cap hell". The build through the draft argument just doesn't hold any water because we have the money to sign FA's AND pay all of our draft picks and still be under the cap. Okay, one more time so we can all be sure we got it. We aren't going to lose anything in the draft by signing free agents. We won't lose picks, we won't lose the ability to sign picks, we won't lose the ability to re-sign our successful past draft picks. There is no reason(other than them not wanting to come here) why we can't get some playmakers.