{"id":123935,"date":"2025-06-12T11:56:14","date_gmt":"2025-06-12T11:56:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/123935\/"},"modified":"2025-06-12T11:56:14","modified_gmt":"2025-06-12T11:56:14","slug":"chris-olave-laughs-off-trade-rumors-i-love-it-with-saints-saints","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/123935\/","title":{"rendered":"Chris Olave laughs off trade rumors: ‘I love it’ with Saints | Saints"},"content":{"rendered":"

If Chris Olave<\/a> bothered to search his name on social media this offseason, or if he stumbled across it, the New Orleans Saints wide receiver wouldn\u2019t have had to wait long to find it mentioned alongside a trade rumor.<\/p>\n

Practically any time Olave was brought up, some other NFL team \u2014 or at least their fans \u2014 salivated over the idea of acquiring the 24-year-old. It seemed not to matter that the Saints had no interest in dealing arguably their best player. Why let that pesky fact get in the way of Olave photoshopped in a Pittsburgh Steelers jersey?<\/p>\n

Olave not only heard the buzz, he laughed about it.<\/p>\n

\u201cMan, it\u2019s all rumors, man,\u201d Olave said. \u201cYou see in the NBA, some of the top players be in trade rumors. Everybody be in trade rumors during the offseason. \u2026 I love it here, man. I love the front office. I love my coaches. I\u2019m excited to be here \u2014 and I want to be here forever, so this is where I want to be.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Olave finished his sentence, it was pointed out to him that in the NBA, those players are actually traded sometimes.<\/p>\n

It is much rarer to see NFL deals come together, particularly involving a player of Olave\u2019s caliber. When they do happen, the reasons typically come down to a club hitting the reset button or wanting to avoid paying a star. Think of last year\u2019s Marshon Lattimore trade between the Saints and the Washington Commanders, or the Steelers\u2019 acquisition of wide receiver D.K. Metcalf from the Seattle Seahawks this offseason.<\/p>\n

The Saints aren\u2019t there with Olave. Sure, certain fan bases might have seen Derek Carr\u2019s retirement as an excuse for New Orleans to cut bait with Olave. But the Saints were much more concerned with wanting to get the wide receiver back into the fold after his last season was cut short because of a concussion.<\/p>\n

The bigger question now, as it relates to Olave and the Saints, is whether a contract extension is in store.<\/p>\n

New Orleans picked up his fifth-year option in April, locking him in for a projected $15.5 million in 2026. But Olave is eligible for an extension, and the NFL has seen teams reach deals with fourth-year players entering similar situations.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wouldn\u2019t worry too much about that,\u201d Saints coach Kellen Moore said, referring to the trade rumors involving Olave. \u201cWe feel really, really good about Chris. He\u2019s had an excellent offseason, he\u2019s had an excellent career so far and he\u2019s going to have an excellent future.\u201d<\/p>\n

There may be legitimate reasons for the Saints to wait on an extension. For one, there\u2019s Olave\u2019s concussion history. The 2022 first rounder has had five documented concussions since 2020, including two last year. Olave said he was cleared by specialists in December and that he\u2019s not worried about his future, but the reality is his history may warrant a wait-and-see approach.<\/p>\n

But at the same time, Olave has been a very productive player when available \u2014 and those guys tend to get paid. He has the fourth-most receiving yards of his draft class, even after missing 12 games in three seasons. And he began his career with back-to-back 1,000-yard campaigns.<\/p>\n

If the Saints are interested in securing Olave\u2019s future, getting a deal done this offseason would likely benefit them in the long run to avoid letting other deals set the market. In Olave\u2019s draft class, Atlanta\u2019s Drake London, the Jets\u2019 Garrett Wilson, and Dallas\u2019 George Pickens are among the other wideouts possibly in line for a new contract.<\/p>\n

From the 2021 draft, seven players who were drafted in the first round received extensions before or during their fourth season. That list includes three wide receivers: Philadelphia\u2019s DeVonta Smith (three years, $75 million), Miami\u2019s Jaylen Waddle (three years, $84.8 million) and Baltimore\u2019s Rashod Bateman (two years, $12.9 million).<\/p>\n

A year before that, only four first-rounders received an extension under the same criteria \u2014 but that list notably includes Saints guard Cesar Ruiz. In Ruiz\u2019s case, New Orleans declined his fifth-year option and instead signed him to a four-year, $44 million extension.<\/p>\n

Complicating matters, the wide receiver market has exploded over the last two offseasons. New contracts for Justin Jefferson (four years, $140 million), CeeDee Lamb (four years, $136 million) and Brandon Aiyuk (four years, $120 million) helped reset the market. Then this offseason, JaMarr Chase (four years, $161 million) became the league\u2019s highest-paid receiver, while Metcalf (four years, $132 million) cracked into the top five at his position.<\/p>\n

Eight receivers, in all, make at least $30 million per year. Another 13 make more than $20 million annually.<\/p>\n

Among those, the most comparable deal for Olave might be the four-year, $115 million deal signed by Tee Higgins \u2014 the 26-year-old who still received nearly $28.8 million annually despite missing 10 games over the last two seasons.<\/p>\n

The Saints must also determine if Olave is a player their new coaching staff wants to build around. On that front, the wide receiver has already impressed. Moore has raved about Olave\u2019s football intelligence, recalling a pre-draft meeting he had in which Olave was able to accurately draw up plays taught to him only hours earlier.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, until a deal is done, trade speculation \u2014 no matter how unfounded \u2014 will likely continue.<\/p>\n

But even that\u2019s a compliment in its own way.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople want good players and so they\u2019re always chasing to find ways to get good players on their team,\u201d Moore said. \u201cAnd we feel like we\u2019ve got a good one in him.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If Chris Olave bothered to search his name on social media this offseason, or if he stumbled across…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":123936,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2076],"tags":[7,4095,896,55,2572,2571,6,397],"class_list":{"0":"post-123935","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-orleans-saints","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-hardwall","10":"tag-new-orleans","11":"tag-new-orleans-saints","12":"tag-neworleans","13":"tag-neworleanssaints","14":"tag-nfl","15":"tag-saints"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114670271447153382","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123935"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123935\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/123936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}