Saints Mickey Loomis opens up about losing Armstead & Williams

NEW ORLEANS (WVUE) - We’re nearing the end of the NFL’s version of ‘March Madness’, but for the most part, despite a lot of headlines, the Saints have stood pat. A lot of their 2021 team remains, with two big exceptions.

The biggest, literally, is left tackle Terron Armstead, who’s now in Miami.

“I know he wanted to be with the Saints, and we wanted him,” general manager Mickey Loomis explained. “Yet it was only going to be if the market wasn’t what he expected. I always felt like the market was going to be up there for him. He’s such a good player and such a good person, good for a team that someone was going to recognize that and make him a really good offer. "

The Saints first free agent to move on was safety Marcus Williams, who landed in Baltimore on a five-year, $70 million deal. Loomis said it was simply a matter of not being able to afford what the Ravens were willing to give him.

" We had an offer to him last year, and I would say that we weren’t going to be in the same ballpark where he ultimately ended up,” Loomis said. “That’s just a numbers game and a salary cap issue for us. "

Part of it can be attributed to the price of success. The more you of it you have, the more valuable players become. When that happens, player costs inevitably go up. In a perfect world, a team can retain everyone, but that’s just not reality.

“It’s hard to fit everybody under the cap, and yet it’s a good problem to have.” Loomis said. “But it can be a problem sometimes. For example, Terron Armstead and Marcus Williams, we couldn’t afford to keep at the magnitude of the deals that were available to them.”

That’s simply life in the modern NFL.

See a spelling or grammar error in our story? Click Here to report it. Please include the headline.