Drew Brees is the franchise star of the New Orleans Saints especially after the trade of Jimmy Graham to the Seattle Seahawks. However, the quarterback's place on the team has come under fire as the franchise continues to trade and release players for salary cap space help. Brees is the biggest cap hit of all and many began to speculate that the quarterback would be gone sooner rather than later.
According to New Orleans general manager Mickey Loomis, the Saints are not trading away Brees this offseason and likely would not deal him next season when his cap hit becomes even larger.
"You know, we've never put a 'For Sale' sign out on all of our players. I've read that a couple times, that 'anything and everything was up for grabs.' That was never true and isn't true," Loomis said, via ESPN.com. "And yet, at the same time, you get calls from teams all the time asking about certain things and certain players. And listen, we're always available to listen. That doesn't mean we're shopping players or that we're trying to make wholesale roster changes or anything in the way that some of these articles describe it. I haven't made a single call asking anybody about Drew Brees. I think that's just in general some media members who have too much time on their hands and they start coming up with these what-if scenarios."
With two first-round draft picks, it would be very easy for the Saints to trade away Brees and draft Marcus Mariota in a deal moving up the boards and begin a new era of the franchise. New Orleans could still make a move for Mariota, but it would not be to make him an immediate starter. New Orleans has a lot of holes to fill especially at the wide receiver position. Drafting Mariota while the team still has Brees feels like a waste. The team could easily move up for a wide receiver like Amari Cooper or Kevin White instead which would really please Brees for the long run.
Loomis stresses that the other moves made by the Saints do not indicate that Brees is gone as well. The Saints were in a bad position with their salary cap which required the release of certain players, but the general manager does not expect anything else marquee to happen.
