Saints don't have any perfect options with Derek Carr. They need to find something that makes sense

There is one thing Kellen Moore knows he can’t do at any point as coach of the Saints, but especially not during his first season.

“You can’t ever walk into a team meeting or a locker room and say, ‘We’re not competing,’” the coach said.

And with that, it became clear that no one was just talking or doing lip service. Derek Carr is the quarterback of the New Orleans Saints. And just like that, all the king’s horses and the king’s men came rushing in, but they couldn’t put the dreams of the rebuilders back together again.

So, yeah. This is it. I started to think about it. I know many of you had, too. Throw Rattler in there, see what happens, and regroup if you need to. And then there were even the more radical people, the ones who wanted to cut everyone, try to win two games, and then head down to First Street, pick up a Manning, and ride the king’s horses back to glory.

It was a dream. I don’t know if it was a good dream or a bad dream. The results are usually what determine that. One offensive player sent a message after the news hit everyone’s timeline. “Good.”

Is it? I don’t know. See, the nasty thing, the unfair thing, about being a person who gets analyzed for making football decisions is that every decision you make gets compared against something abstract. Anyone saying today the team should move on (and I’m one of those people, although I have always thought the right financial decision was to move on after the 2026 season, but we’ll get into that more shortly) is envisioning a future where things work out. The Saints find some answer at quarterback. Either Rattler works out or they find a cheap veteran who hits or they bottom out and draft the right QB.

If you’re advocating for change — and again, I include myself in that group — you might be softly acknowledging that things might not work out, but you aren’t really acknowledging that everything could go bad. Dark, hopeless. My take is that I’d be ready to risk it to find a permanent answer, get past the quarterback insecurity, and stare it down. But I’m also not the person that has to walk in front of the rest of the players and tell them “We’re not competing.” I’m guessing it’s a little harder to make that decision and tell Tyrann Mathieu and Alvin Kamara and Chris Olave and Erik McCoy and Demario Davis that you’re going to waste a year of their careers. It’s a little bit easier to fire off a Tweet during episodes of Severance or while talking into a microphone for the third time that week.

So, I get it, the decision is the decision. But also, some of the hope and possibility that we thought and hoped were coming with this change just took a great fall.

I’ve been thinking about the Colts a lot lately, being in Indy, walking past Lucas Oil Stadium every day, seeing what’s going on with Anthony Richardson. How can you not think about the Colts? That franchise makes you realize how hard all of this is. I’m not sure there was one single questionable decision in finding their next quarterback, and yet after swinging the bat a whole bunch of times, they still don't have a quarterback despite doing all the things we would tell a team in their position to do.

Peyton Manning got hurt. They tanked for a year, got the No. 1 pick, and moved on to The Greatest Quarterback Prospect of All Time, Andrew Luck. Right decision. Had to. How lucky, even, to go from the GOAT to the GQPAT. And Andrew Luck wasn’t just good. He was really good. But he didn’t win any Super Bowls and he didn’t win any MVPs, and then he decided he didn’t want to win at all after playing six seasons and missing another. He walked away from the game before turning 30.

Peyton Manning famously got healthy and had some of the best passing seasons of all time. He won an MVP and finished second another time. He won a Super Bowl and lost another. Of course, the Colts had to move on and risk it, but Peyton Manning reminded us that colts grow into broncos and not the other way around.

So, Luck stepped away. Here’s what happened next: Jacoby Brissett, Brian Hoyer, Philip Rivers, Carson Wentz, Matt Ryan, Sam Ehlinger, Nick Foles, Gardner Minshew, Anthony Richardson, Joe Flacco. That list includes damn near every “what can go wrong” to every quarterback scenario you can imagine. Can’t miss? Missed. Try an older vet? Missed. Rehabilitate a former top prospect? Missed. Go cheap and surround a QB with talent? Missed. Take a toolsy guy in the top 10? Missed.

And look, it wasn’t all bad. They’ve had some good seasons and mostly been competitive since Luck stepped away. Rivers actually had something going there for a bit. But the Colts have done mostly everything the way all of us would have done it each and every time they had to step up to the square and make a decision. And they still don’t have an answer. If the Colts had all the information they have now, do they even let Peyton walk? It’s fair to wonder. I might even say no. Finding a quarterback is hard. Finding a quarterback who can win you a Super Bowl is even harder.

A few weeks ago, when we were covering Kellen Moore, Eagles offensive coordinator at the Super Bowl, we came back from our second time sitting at a table and chatting with him and jumped on the microphone. Thoughts fresh in mind, I said I had a sneaky suspicion that Moore would end up feeling like, among the options currently on the roster, that Carr is the best option to run his offense. On Wednesday of this week, Moore sat at a table as head coach of the New Orleans Saints and fielded questions for more than an hour. He said that he felt fortunate to have Derek Carr as his quarterback.

So, as we sit here today, I can’t say the thought is outrageous or enraging or anything like that. It makes sense. I thought it was going to end up this way. I can’t say that Moore and the Saints are wrong for rolling with Carr. I just don’t think they’re right. Those are two different things.

He's not the answer three years from now and I think the Saints are in a place where they should be looking at three years from now. But if someone were to say to me, OK, how do you get a player that helps you three years from now, I know I could say a bunch of words that mean things, but I’m not sure that I could answer that question. I personally feel like the best shot of finding a QB is by improving your draft assets, but I’m also aware that your odds of hitting on a QB early in the draft are 50-50 at best. I know all of these arguments well because the last time the Saints were looking for a quarterback, I was arguing for the other side of this debate.

Funny how that works, isn't it? The right answer is the one that works the way you want it to work. And then you try one, and when it doesn’t work, the feeling is to give up and try something else. But what if that’s wrong, too?

Here are my unfiltered thoughts on the topic, and they’ve always been this: I want the Saints to find a different answer at quarterback, and I’d like them to start walking down a new path, but I think, and I’ve always thought, that the best way to do that would be in 2026. I’ve never thought that when you factor in the cap hits, it makes a whole lot of sense to cut a guy and put yourself in a corner where you can’t do anything else to help your team. Yeah, Carr might not be worth another $40 million payout, but I only care about the accounting and what it does to your ability to build the roster. Gayle Benson has already publicly vowed to lend the organization whatever assets it needs to compete. There’s more cash if you need it.

Given that Carr’s contract is already something that exists and the numbers have to be accounted for, meaning there is no clean way out, we really need to evaluate it through that prism. And I think when you look at it that way, wouldn’t the most desirable option be something where you can slash the $40 million Carr is owed down to something like $25 million? Then you walk away next year with much less dead money on the books.

Carr would never do that, you say, while reminding me he already told the world he wouldn’t via Kat Terrell's article at the end of the season. And I say so what? Here’s the thing about the combine. You spend the week kicking the bushes, talking to people, finding out what your market is. And there are two things here.

One: I think Carr is smart enough to know that if he lowers his number, the team can spend more and put better players around him. And the Saints need more better players. A good season in 2025 sets him up to hit the market in 2026 and get another decent contract. If he has a bad season in 2025, he could end up being one of those guys who bounces around on one-year deals for the next decade, and I’m sure he doesn’t want that.

Here’s the other thing: I don’t think anyone else is going to pay him $30 million. I’m not sure anyone else would pay him $25 million. I don’t know what the exact number is, but there’s a number lower than $40 million and higher than whatever Carr could get on the open market for the two sides to settle at and reach a true win-win compromise. That’s a lot of incentive for Carr to agree to that and stick around. I think both sides can see that.

What I think can’t happen is for Carr to return at his current number, and I think everyone involved knows that, too.

One more season doesn’t mean never moving on ... I hope, at least. It doesn't mean not trying to get better in the future. It just means that right now, given the options on the table, Carr is the best one, and Moore feels he owes it to his players to stick with the quarterback most ready to win games and choose the path that allows the Saints the financial flexibility to continue building the roster.

But that also shouldn’t stop the Saints from looking for options in the draft. Maybe the right guy is there in the second round. Maybe the Titans lower the price on the No. 1 pick and the Saints call them on the right day and move up for Cam Ward (don’t hold your breath). Maybe you keep taking swings in the late rounds and draft Hunter Dekkers and hope to strike gold.

No matter what it is, though, I think this is temporary. Change is coming. It just might not be coming today. But that doesn’t mean yesterday’s prices are today’s prices. The Saints have to renegotiate the terms and conditions on everything to make it somewhat palatable because the numbers and the circumstances don’t make sense how they currently exist.

And the only neogitiation that makes sense is taking the numbers down and making sure there's still an exit after this year.