Their rank shows they don’t think too highly of the Saints WR room.
The New Orleans Saints enter the 2025 season with a lot of offensive question marks. They have a new quarterback, a semi-new offensive line and some new pieces in the backfield, but one room they can hopefully rely on is their wide receiver room.
When healthy, Chris Olave and Rashid Shaheed form a very dynamic 1-2 punch. Olave has shown he can be a legitimate WR1 in the NFL while Shaheed has proven to be a really solid compliment and take the top off any defense. They also brought back Brandin Cooks, who hasn’t produced a whole lot recently, but should be a solid WR3.
Despite that, PFF doesn’t seem to think too highly of the Saints’ WR corps. In their most recent WR room rankings, PFF ranked New Orleans’ WR corps 23rd in the league and third in the NFC South, behind both the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Atlanta Falcons.
Here’s what they had to say about the Saints’ WR room:
The Saints’ receiving corps has a lot of asterisks. Chris Olave is an NFL WR1 when healthy, having logged three season-long 82.0-plus PFF receiving grades, but his health is a concern. The same can be said for Rashid Shaheed.
New Orleans brought back Brandin Cooks, but he hasn’t recorded a PFF receiving grade above 70.0 in two years, and he hasn’t topped 1.8 yards per route run since 2021. Running back Alvin Kamara also garnered the lowest PFF receiving grade of his career in 2024 (64.7).
PFF seems to be betting on the fact that Olave and Shaheed won’t stay healthy for the duration of the season. While I disagree with the ranking, they do have a point. These two have been pretty injury prone, especially Olave with all his concussions, but with a new quarterback, hopefully those issues can go away.
PFF has the Saints ranked lower than the Broncos (22nd), Packers (21st) and Bills (19th). I think the Saints have a very strong case to be ranked higher than these three when they’re fully healthy.
The Denver Broncos WR room is going to be led by Courtland Sutton, Marvin Mims and Devaughn Vele. I think I’d definitely take a healthy Olave, Shaheed and Cooks over those three pretty much any day.
The Green Bay Packers have a pretty solid receiver room, which is comprised mainly of Jayden Reed, Matthew Golden and Romeo Doubs. Those are all solid second options, but they don’t have a receiver near the caliber of Olave, and I’d take Shaheed over all of them except Reed this year.
I was really surprised to see the Buffalo Bills ranked all the way up at 19th, but when you have Josh Allen at QB, I guess he can make lesser receivers look better. Their main WR corps is made up of Khalil Shakir, Keon Coleman and Joshua Palmer. I think there’s a case to be made that Olave and Shaheed are better than all of those guys.
I don’t think 23rd is a horrible ranking, and while I get the Saints don’t have the most depth in the world at WR, I would personally place them in the 18-20 range.