USAT: Saints Wire audio clip

USAT: Saints Wire

Feb 7, 2022

- - - Ouch. The New Orleans Saints were very, very close to landing Odell Beckham Jr. in free agency midway through the 2021 regular season — a move that might have changed the fortunes of their season, which finished just shy of a playoff berth. - Beckham said so himself on Monday while making the media rounds ahead of Super Bowl LVI. When asked how seriously he considered his hometown team after being cut by the Cleveland Browns, he responded, “I was close, very close. It just didn’t feel like the right time. Right place, wrong time.” - That’s, well, interesting for a number of reasons. Beckham signed a one-year contract with the Rams and will be a free agent again in March. While Los Angeles will surely want to run it back with him, they may struggle to pay him what he’s seeking with so much other star power on their roster. They were only able to get him on a veteran’s minimum salary by loading his contract up with performance incentives. - That won’t be as big of a problem for the Saints given how ambitious they’ve been in structuring contracts to work around the salary cap. If Beckham is still as receptive to signing with New Orleans in March as he was just four months earlier, maybe he ends up wearing black and gold after all. That would be an enticing pickup, and a heck of an upgrade to the Saints receiving corps. We’ll see in a few weeks whether there’s anything to this story, or whether Beckham just wanted to hand out a great quote on media day. - - List - - Ranking the top Saints team needs in 2022 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Email - - - - - Sign up - - - - - - - - Like this article? - Sign up for the Saints Wire email newsletter to get our top stories in your inbox every morning - - - - An error has occured - - - Please re-enter your email address. - - - - - - Thanks for signing up! - - - You'll now receive the top Saints Wire stories each day directly in your inbox.

F i l t e r   &   S o r t