The New Orleans Saints, like any team, project to be active on the trade market near 53-man roster cutdowns.
Whether those Saints act as buyers or sellers is hard to say, but shipping out players who might not even make the final 53 in return for assets would make some sense.
And that brings the conversation to former first-round pick Payton Turner.
Turner seems like a fringe player at this point, which has Bleacher Report suggesting the Saints ship him to a New England Patriots team that just lost production via the trade of Matthew Judon:
“There are bound to be more trades across the league as we get closer to cutdown day when all teams must get their roster down to 53 players. After trading away Judon, the Patriots have a lot of snaps to go around for their edge-rushers.”
The 28th pick in 2021, Turner has appeared in just 15 games with limited production. New Orleans has slapped the proverbial writing on the wall, too, by adding Chase Young to beef up the rotation with Cameron Jordan and Carl Granderson.
In fact, the duo of Young and Turner might be a little too boom-or-bust as primary depth for the Saints’ liking. Luckily for them, there’s bound to be one team willing to take the risk on a 25-year-old Turner better fitting their system.
Granted, the Saints won’t get back much for Turner when it seems obvious he might not even make the roster, even from a rebuilding team like New England. But something would be better than nothing for a Saints team going through a rebuild of its own around a tight cap situation.
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