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Learn more at vertexinck.com. This is the athletic football show.

Welcome to the athletic football show.

I'm Robert Mays.

Joining me today, break into some breaking news from New Orleans. Dot Football, a Saints Authority. Nick Underhill, Nick, thank you very much for doing this. I'm sure you got a lot to worry about today. Yeah, a little bit, man. But hey, there's a few guys that could have called me today, and I would have showed up to do this. You're one of them. I love listening to the show. I think you do a great job. Respected your writing and everything for years. So thanks for having me on here. I appreciate it. Really appreciate it, man. You wrote a piece today. If you're a Saints fan and you're not subscribed to Nick's site where he's doing a lot of great work that you really can't get anywhere else, highly recommend that you go check it out. I am not a Saints fan and I am a subscriber,

so I think that's all you need to know about the type of information they're putting out over there. You wrote a piece today really about how this all came together. So I want to get into that, but I want to talk about it on a big picture level first and foremost. Just thinking about how Derek Carr, at this stage of his career, at the price they're going to have to pay pay for him fits into the Saints plans. So why Derek Carr, why in this moment, does this marriage make sense to you? The Saints are in a team that I think are ever going to just pull back and start a rebuild. They're always going to try to go forward. They're always going to be the team that trades up in the draft. They're always going to be the team that kind of does the mafia accounting on the salary cap. And there's people that aren't going to like that and they aren't going to like the approach. And look, I understand it. I think there's times maybe even going in the last year where you're kind of looking at it and you're like, does this make sense anymore? Like once they missed out on Deshaun Watson like why are you still kind of you know going for

it the way you are but where they've kind of built their team is if they pull back now like their

core of players alvin cameron cameron dam marion ladomar like guys like that uh ryan ramchek

you waste the end of their careers you just traded all these picks last year to get Chris Olive. If you don't get a quarterback now, that trade was for nothing. And you just gave up a top 10 pick for Andy Dalton to throw passes to Chris Alave for another year. So I think just kind of the way they build their team, where they're at, how they operate, this is a move that kind of makes sense for them. And i think you know you kind of look at the finalist here it's the saints and it's the jets

going for derrick car the jets have picked in the top five i think twice their last good quarterback i

think i would say would be mark sanchise maybe i mean and they're the team they're the team

going i think that you to find good i mean it was the last time that it felt like it. But yeah, I mean, it's been a long time. So I think just kind of, you know, it allows you to get somebody in the fold. And the one thing I would say is I don't think it precludes them from continuing to look in the draft for people. But at least then you're making moves you want to make. Maybe you're trading up to get to 10 one year to get Patrick Mahomes instead of trading up to 10 to get Mac Jones because you feel like you have to. So I just feel like if you can get somebody that's kind of a solid quarterback in a bad division and you can win the NFC South and you can get to the playoffs with all the stuff they've done, it kind of makes sense for their very specific situation. I think that's the important part to point out is that it's a

very specific situation. If you were doing this in a vacuum signing a 32 year old quarterback who's,

let's say the 12th best quarterback in the league on a good day, it's a dicey proposition.

It's going to limit you in some of your other team building avenues and possibilities, and you're going to cut some avenues off for you to make yourself better. But they're not operating in a vacuum. They're in a very specific situation where you have an aging roster. I believe they were number one in the league at Snapweighted age. Bill Barnwell pointed out earlier this spring. Not surprising when you look at some of the most prominent players on the roster where they're at in their careers. They don't have a ton of draft capital. They obviously got the first back in the patent trade, but they're giving away a top 10 pick in this year's draft, so they don't have that many avenues to a rookie quarterback contract. This is a way for them to compete right now. And I said it in December, you know, when it kind of

all the writing on the wall seemed to point to Derrick Carr being released. Quarterbacks like this

just don't get released very often. Whatever you think of Derek Carr, there's a reason that

he had multiple suitors, multiple teams wanting to come after him, because quarterbacks of this

caliber, top half of the league quarterbacks,

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