Time's running out for Cameron Jordan, Taysom Hill to yield comp picks

Cameron Jordan is still a free agent. So is his longtime teammate Taysom Hill. If you've been to a New Orleans Saints game in the last few years (or just made a to-go plate from the hot bar at your local Rouse's Market during football season), there's a good chance you've seen a couple of their jerseys in the crowd. Those are household names in Saints country and seeing either player wearing different colors in the fall would be painful. Losing them and getting nothing back would be even worse.

But the clock is ticking. The deadline for free agent signings to factor into the compensatory picks formula is always 3 p.m. CT on the Monday following the draft. We've seen the Saints take advantage of this loophole before by waiting to sign Jameis Winston and Tyrann Mathieu after the draft. There have been other years they were too eager to sign someone, and it cost them; rushing to ink Andy Dalton in 2022 wiped out what would have been a third-round pick in the 2023 draft. The NFL basically took pity on the Saints and gave them a seventh rounder anyway.

In most years, including this one, the Saints have been too active in free agency to qualify -- in other words, they added more players than they lost, so there was nothing to be compensated for. It's very, very close, but that's where New Orleans is right now. Over The Cap's experts have the Saints with three qualifying losses (, , and ) against five qualifying additions in free agency. Signing Travis Etienne Jr., , , , and outweighs those departures.