Like it or not, but Jameis Winston is the new face of the New Orleans Saints at quarterback. The former No. 1 overall draft pick and Heisman Trophy winner flamed out with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, but a year riding shotgun while Drew Brees ran the Saints offense and a training camp victory over Taysom Hill for the starting job have put him front and center in New Orleans. The team’s fortunes are irrevocably tied to his own on-field success.
And other teams aren’t quite sure what to make of it. The Athletic’s Mike Sando polled five executives around the league to rank all sixteen teams in the NFC, separately from the AFC, and then averaged each team’s placement against their peers. That put the Saints at sixth in the conference and right in the middle of competing for a wild-card seed. Here’s what Sando wrote of New Orleans:
6. New Orleans Saints
Votes: 7-11-8-3-6 | Avg: 7.0 | Median: 7
The Saints could be relocating for the season’s first month following Hurricane Ida, which would seem to put them at a disadvantage. They are also going into a season without Drew Brees for the first time since 2005, when Jim Haslett was head coach and Mike Sheppard was calling the offensive plays.
Voters disagreed over how well Jameis Winston would fare in Sean Payton’s offense.
“Having a year off the field with Sean and around Drew, I think that helps,” one voter said. “Obviously, he humbled himself going there, and I think it was a great move bringing him in. Just a couple of throws he made the other night, not too many people are making those throws. New Orleans will be able to attack more of the field this year than they could with Drew’s limitations in arm strength.”
Winston famously tossed 30 interceptions in his final season with Tampa Bay. He never tossed more than 18 in an NFL season previously.
“I think the quarterback is going to be bad, but they got a good line and they have a good defense,” another voter said. “They got good coaching. Maybe they’ll be able to run the ball and play good defense and trick some teams, but if Jameis is going to throw the ball as many times as he did in Tampa, they are going to have problems. He was intercepted 30 times and sacked 47. That’s awful, and that’s not luck. These are problems throughout his career.”
Winston averaged 39 pass attempts per game in his final year at Tampa Bay (after averaging 34 attempts per game in his previous four seasons), while the Saints averaged 33 passes per game as a team in 2020, and near that over the past few years. While New Orleans has a history of fielding high-volume passing offenses, it’s unlikely they’ll ask Winston to go out and throw it 40 times a game. As the sources Sando spoke with said, the team’s strengths should allow for a more conservative game plan.
Can Winston avoid his signature giveaways even on a lighter pitch count? He’s spent his offseason working to improve his mechanics and decision-making, and maybe it pays off. But some skepticism that he can change his style of play so late into his career is warranted. It’s a shaky bedrock to build the team’s future on.
And that’s why the Saints ended up ranked among other fringe playoff teams like the Dallas Cowboys and Minnesota Vikings. If (and it’s a big “if,” so just indulge me here) this ranking ends up being prophetic and totally accurate, the Saints would enter the NFC playoff picture as the seventh seed, bound for a Wild-Card Round matchup with the Los Angeles Rams. Maybe Winston can exceed expectations and keep the Saints in New Orleans to open the playoffs instead.
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