Entering the offseason one of the biggest questions for Saints fans was who gets paid, Marcus Williams or Trey Hendrickson. Both players are coming off of the best season of their careers since being drafted in 2017.
With the cap space being in the negatives approaching the offseason it would be unlikely to keep both and would have to prioritize one.
The Saints knew exactly who they were gonna make a priority to keep from the start of the offseason, Marcus Williams. Yesterday the Saints franchise tagged the star safety, but why not Trey Hendrickson?
There are multiple factors that affected this decision like the market, the players value, roster depth, cap hit, and the future.
The first thing that comes to mind when looking at the roster is depth. If Trey leaves you still have Davenport, Granderson, and the draft provides more opportunities to get a good defensive edge rusher.
As for safety, if Williams leaves the next man up is either J.T. Gray or D.J Swearinger (pending if he resigns). Finding a safety within the draft is a lot less opportunistic than finding productive defensive edge rushers within the draft.
The market for the safety position featured Justin Simmons, Marcus Maye, and Marcus Williams as the biggest names. With Simmons and Maye being franchise tagged that leaves Williams at the top of the market. This raises his value at the safety position and teams will value him even higher.
The Saints would not be able to compete with other teams to keep Williams if he hit the market. Teams like the Jaguars with $73 million in cap were interested in the young safety, and the Saints would simply lose Williams without having a shot.
Meanwhile Trey Hendrickson’s value stays about the same in the market, so he would not be as much of a priority than Williams.
Most importantly the skill level of the player matters the most. Marcus Williams has been progressively getting better by the year and becoming one of the best at his position. Trey Hendrickson had a breakout year, but that’s one year out of four. Some players only produce on contract years, then become nonexistent once they get paid. Not saying that is what will happen to Trey, but it’s a risk to resign him to big money off of one good season.
Retaining Williams with the franchise tag was the right move for the Saints, especially if they want to continue to be a competitive playoff team. If the Saints and Williams can come to an agreement on an extension prior to the new league year, this free’s up more cap space and then franchise tag likely comes off of Williams.
Related articles here
Written By Kadin Janisch
Images are used under section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976 allowance is made for “fair use” for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, education and research.
If you own the rights to an image being used and would like it taken down, please email me and I will kindly do so.
