New Orleans Saints

Saints Injuries Create Depth

Published Jun. 30, 2017 6:28 p.m. ET

foxsports

It’s starting to look like the Saints injuries will help with their depth in the future.

Barring any setbacks or major injuries, the New Orleans Saints should see the return of several starters to their defense this weekend against San Francisco. Playing reserve players and off the street/waiver wire guys never helps with wins, but it can help build depth. Saints fans knew little of Nate Stupar, B.W. Webb and Sterling Moore before this season; even before this stretch of games where injuries crippled the Saints. But these names are starting to develop into players you might want to see in Black and Gold for a few more years.

Due to the Saints salary cap woes, they aren’t able to shop like so many other teams do. They don’t have the luxury of going to get what they want. They can only take what they need and hope that the selection pays off. There is no way to go back and get a refund or replace the damaged goods with a like product.

There is something to be said about trial by fire, though. If you come through it well, you’ll be rewarded positively on the other end more times than not. The Saints weren’t planning on exposing Vonn Bell and Ken Crawley to so much football so soon, but when the injury bug hit, the Who Dat’s had to step up their game – quickly. In a matter of 3 weeks, the Saints lost 3 cornerbacks that the team expected to play a lot of minutes. But the change in defensive philosophy and personnel may work out in our favor down the line.

As we move forward into the latter half of the season, the Saints look to be one of the teams that will have more guys who have played a lot of meaningful minutes. We’ll see whether it pays dividends this season or is a building block for next season. Seems this team may be trending in the right direction, particularly with more depth on the defensive side of the ball.