METAIRIE, La. \u2014 The New Orleans Saints have reached one-year contact agreements with defensive end Jonathan Bullard and safety Julian Blackmon.<\/p>\n
The club announced the pair of free agent deals on Wednesday evening, following the first practice of its 2025 training camp. Both players are joining a Saints defense that is changing systems under new coordinator Brandon Staley in what is also the club’s first season under rookie coach Kellen Moore.<\/p>\n
The 6-foot-3, 290-pound Bullard is a nine-year NFL veteran who played in college for Florida before Chicago selected him in the third round of the 2016 NFL Draft. <\/p>\n
He spent his first three seasons with the Bears before one year stints with Arizona (2019), Seattle (2020) and Atlanta (2021), followed by three seasons with Minnesota (2022-24).<\/p>\n
Bullard started all 17 games for the Vikings last season, finishing with 41 solo or assisted tackles, one sack and three quarterback hits. He also set career-highs with seven tackles for loss and three pass breakups. <\/p>\n
He has started 53 of 116 career games, recording 221 solo or assisted tackles, 6 1\/2 sacks, 28 tackles for loss, eight pass breakups and two forced fumbles. <\/p>\n
The signing of the 6-foot, 202-pound Blackmon came one day after Saints safety and former LSU star Tyrann Mathieu unexpectedly announced his retirement from the NFL after 12 seasons.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
New Orleans Saints head coach Kellen Moore, center, talks with staff and executive vice president\/general manager Mickey Loomis, right, during the team’s NFL football training camp in Metairie, La., Wednesday, July 23, 2025. Credit: AP\/Matthew Hinton<\/p>\n
Blackmon has played all five of his NFL seasons with Indianapolis since the Colts made him a third-round draft choice out of Utah in 2020.<\/p>\n
He has started 62 of 66 games and has 10 career interceptions, one of which he returned for a touchdown. He also has 293 tackles, 1 1\/2 sacks, 13 tackles for loss, 21 pass breakups, two forced fumbles and four fumble recoveries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"METAIRIE, La. \u2014 The New Orleans Saints have reached one-year contact agreements with defensive end Jonathan Bullard and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":231170,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2076],"tags":[41907,7,392,896,55,2572,2571,6,397,2309],"class_list":{"0":"post-231169","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-orleans-saints","8":"tag-audio_enabled","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-indianapolis-colts","11":"tag-new-orleans","12":"tag-new-orleans-saints","13":"tag-neworleans","14":"tag-neworleanssaints","15":"tag-nfl","16":"tag-saints","17":"tag-wires-bot"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114905760652324653","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231169","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=231169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231169\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/231170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}