Saints sign Safety Justin Reid to a 3-year, $31.5 million deal

St. Widge said
If the options are 20 years of sucking before you get it right like the teams on your list or 20 years of being average before it works out, I'll take 20 years of average.

Neither of those are realistic outcomes. If we would have tanked and reset the cap immediately after Brees retired we would be in a completely different situation.

We can use the Patriots as an example moving forward.

St. Widge said
Picking high is no guarantee of elite players and that's why all those teams picked high for 20 plus years before it finally worked. And, frankly, Detroit may fall quickly without their OC, the Bengals are no better than we are, and the Texans are not exactly on an upward trajectory.

If you think the Bengals are no better than we are idk what to tell you. We will just have to revisit this at a later date.

Texans have made the playoffs the last two years. They are definitely on an upward trajectory.

Eventually the toll will come due with Mickey and co. There's only so many years of bad drafting and FA spending with backloaded contracts before we end up just bad enough to tank without trying.

Maybe that's this year, maybe that's next. The only way out is through drafting elite players which is significantly easier with higher picks.

2017 has shown it's possible to do so without having a high pick but we have been landing goose eggs since.