Rebuilding strategy, forty-niners or saints?

guillermo said
We are watching two different strategies right now on rebuilding.

San Francisco have lost 11 starters, considering they knew to rejuvenate their roster. They also need a big chunk of money to pay for their young franchise quarterback. They are not going to be competitive for the next two years, but they are willing to accept this.

New Orleans is riding the wave of the salary cap. They were not able to release Derek Carr because they think he is the best option to build around, and also because of cap consequences. They also decided to extend veteran Demario Davis and other core players. Finally, they extended Chase Young and Juwan Johnson to what we may consider overpaid contracts, but losing them would have made holes on our current cap structure.

Both teams will arrive to cleaner caps (I hope) in a year or two.

Two different approaches, re-building by destruction or by continuity.

At the end, the team that drafts better will come out better.

An interesting comparison case to follow.

I think it depends on your core and several other factors.

Because our core was mostly veterans over the age of 30, selling to them wasted years on careers that have already extended past normal shelf lives is borderline disrespectful. Focusing on winning because of the core of that lockeroom is important. Yet, the Saints are also in a corner due to how they handled the cap so they almost have to do it as well because it doesn't make fiscal sense to still have to pay players while they are on another team. Might as well keep them...

You also have to consider the state of our division which is still conducive to winnning it. For example the NFC West produced 34 wins. The NFC South 23 wins. For comparison the NFC North produced 45 wins, the AFC South 25.

The Saints can win their weak division and should be aiming to. The 49ers likely don't see a path to contending right away, so tearing it down makes more sense.