Saints fans have argued with justification that the cap is kind of made up and you can just keep rolling those hits forever you can, but there are team-building costs associated with doing so that New Orleans is showing us in real-time. When they’re finally ready to take those big cap hits, if they ever are, they’ll be doing so with a decimated roster. Amusingly, their drafts have mostly been really good it’s the investments in Derek Carr and insistence on holding on to players who just aren’t as good anymore in the hopes of chasing fading glory that is killing this team. Drew Brees is gone, Sean Payton departed, and Cam Jordan and company are aging out of excellence, but the Saints keep pushing the cap hits down the line, re-structuring like mad, and counting on one or two big signings to push them over the top. The Saints are showing what happens when you double down forever on an increasingly creaky roster and lackluster coaching staff. It’s also instructive, in a way, because each team is showing us unique ways to fail in today’s NFL: The only reason they’re well clear of the basement is because the 1-8 Panthers are dwelling there, and they may well clear house again this offseason because they A) stink and B) David Tepper is big red-faced finance weirdo who seem prone to ragequit on front offices and coaching staffs. Our Falcons are 4-6 and underperforming their expectations at a level that is rage-inducing, and they’ve now lost three increasingly embarrassing games in a row. The Bucs are temporarily back in second place at 4-5, but they’re as inconsistent and unfinished a team as you’ll find in the NFL today, prone to big swings between competence and putridity. The Saints are “leading” the division today at 5-5 and have a positive point differential, but their offense is lackluster and their defense randomly explodes into a fiery mess of old guys and underperformance. The Bucs were immediately drubbed in the Wild Card round, and we braced for this to be a bad division again in 2023. The Bucs won it at 8-9, and the remaining three teams in the division all went 7-10 en route to an embarrassing finish. The Buccaneers experienced a brie Tom Brady-led renaissance, but the 2022 season was a sobering one for a once-proud division. Instead, they fell off one-by-one, with the Saints the last team to truly give up that dream. Led by franchise signal callers and powered by quality rosters, the Atlanta Falcons, Carolina Panthers, and New Orleans Saints figured to be in the mix among the NFC’s better teams for at least the short-term. Three of four teams made the playoffs-the Buccaneers were still basement dwellers at this point-and all three had double digit wins. The NFC South was one of the NFL’s great divisions in 2017.
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