We saw the New Orleans Saints move two of their top pending free agents at this week’s NFL trade deadline, which raises an important question: who’s left? With Rashid Shaheed joining the Seattle Seahawks and Trevor Penning going to the Los Angeles Chargers, that left Alontae Taylor and a couple of over-the-hill defenders as the team’s best remaining players on expiring deals.

This team needs to experience a lot of turnover to get competitive again, and the offseason at least brings hope that they could improve. With that in mind, we’ve updated the list of Saints 2026 free agents as a midseason primer. Who should be extended from this list? Who should be let go? You decide:

Exclusive rights free agentsP Kai Kroeger: 29.1% of snapsTE Zaire Mitchell-Paden: 16.2% of snapsLB Isaiah Stalbird: 5.4% of snapsCB Rejzohn Wright: 0.3% of snapsQB Hunter Dekkers: 0.0% of snapsOL Barry Wesley: 0.0% of snapsTE Mason Pline: 0.0% of snapsRB Audric Estime: 0.0% of snaps

These guys have limited options — if the Saints choose, they can bring ERFA’s back on a minimum contract, or let these players test the market. The free agents themselves have no say in the matter. ERFA’s are players with two or fewer accrued seasons (at least six games per year) coming off an expired contract. This year, that cost between $840,000 and $1,030,000 per player, depending on how many accrued seasons they had. That barely moves the needle in salary cap decisions.

Restricted free agentsK Blake Grupe: 31.3% of snaps

The Saints will have a couple of options with Grupe. They can choose to re-sign him on a minimum salary contract, or issue him an RFA tender that would give them the right to match any offers he gets from other teams. He hasn’t performed well enough to earn a tender that guarantees compensation if the Saints let him walk away, so there probably won’t be too much intrigue here. The choice is re-signing Grupe to the minimum ($1.1 million in 2025) or the right-of-first-refusal tender ($3.26 million in 2025). It doesn’t feel likely another team will try to sign him away, but you never know.

Unrestricted free agentsCB Alontae Taylor: 93.0% of snapsEDGE Chris Rumph II: 35.0% of snapsDL Jonathan Bullard: 26.6% of snapsTE Jack Stoll: 26.0% of snapsDL Jonah Williams: 21.4% of snapsS Julian Blackmon: 11.1% of snapsDL John Ridgeway: 2.7% of snapsCB Michael Davis: 0.3% of snapsCB Ugo Amadi: 0.2% of snapsOL Will Clapp: 0.0% of snapsOL Landon Young: 0.0% of snaps

This isn’t complicated. These are the players headed for the open market, where they’ll have the opportunity to weigh offers from other teams and choose where they go from here. And after trading Shaheed and Penning, the Saints are left with just one big name to consider re-signing: Taylor. Their interest in dealing him at the trade deadline suggests they’ve already made their decision, but a lot could change between now and then. If any of these players leave on a deal averaging more than about $2.5 million per year, the Saints could qualify for a compensatory draft pick in 2027.

Voiding contractsLB Demario Davis (void): 99.3% of snapsEDGE Cameron Jordan (void): 60.1% of snapsTE Foster Moreau (void): 14.6% of snapsQB Taysom Hill (void): 7.6% of snaps

These are basically the same as unrestricted free agents in that they can test the market and qualify for comp picks, but the difference is the Saints will take on some dead money should any of them leave, having previously restructured their contracts. That means charges of $14.29 million for Davis, $18.76 million for Jordan, $1.4 million for Moreau, and $13.723 million for Hill. Those numbers can be lowered by re-signing each of them. It’s just a matter of whether that’s worth it given how uncompetitive the team is, and expects to be.

For what it’s worth, the Saints already have the second-most dead money on the books in the 2026 at nearly $62.6 million. Letting all four contracts void raises that figure to a staggering $110,771,682. If the salary cap has the same jump in 2026 that it had from 2024 to 2025, the Saints would be paying 36.6% of their spending limit towards players not on the team.