I just don’t understand how people can continue to say this. Go look at past Saints teams. Go look at other teams.
Depth across the league is comprised mostly of veterans playing at or near the league minimal or at best on one year “prove it deals” similar to what we gave Chase Young and Willie Gay, along with recent draft picks.
Teams are not spending tons of cap space on backups. They keep their roster top heavy and take cost cutting measures at virtually all backup positions except maybe DL like we have.
Poor drafting is what has hurt us more than anything, along with abrupt retirements of guys like Ram and Hurst, and we also have “suspect” free agents we have signed such as Jamaal Williams that has made depth at that position seem more poor than it is.
Our depth woes are also overstated by many because of an odd unique situation where we had too much depth on the field at once at the same time, which would make every team suddenly feel like their depth is poor, much less a team like ours that doesn’t have enough competent drafted understudies behind starters. Hell, we even have guys that were signed specifically to be "better than veteran minimum" depth pieces that either are or were hurt themselves, further exasperating the issue at key positions.
The “Our depth is poor because of the cap” just seems silly to me; the budgeted cap room for depth is near the level it always has been except for maybe at QB; we have just drafted and/or signed too many of the wrong guys and/or have failed to develop them over too prolonged of a period of time.
Seriously…how much money do people really think other teams with traditional caps are spending on depth? This has become too much of a boogeyman crutch to lean on. I promise you that it isn't some number that is egregiously higher than ours. We have sucked at picking and developing/coaching players, period.