Saints Starter Avoiding Free Agency With New Deal

The Saints have been very busy recently since free agency opened...

Sep 8, 2024; New Orleans, Louisiana, USA; Detailed view of the New Orleans Saints football helmet before the game against the Carolina Panthers during the pregame at Caesars Superdome. Mandatory Credit: Stephen Lew-Imagn Images / Stephen Lew-Imagn Images

The New Orleans Saints have had to take a long, hard look at some of the contracts on the books already this offseason.

New Orleans has restructured a handful of deals over the last few weeks in preparation of free agency. The Saints have done a great job and created enough cap space to make moves like re-signing Chase Young and Juwan Johnson. New Orleans also signed Justin Reid in a much-needed move to bolster the safety room.

All in all, it has been a pretty good offseason so far for the Saints. One move that the Saints made was restructuring seven-year veteran Nathan Shepherd's deal. One thing that is nice about his restructuring is the fact that it also added a new year to the deal, according to NewOrleans.Football's Mike Triplett.

"Saints and Shepherd also added one new year to the deal at a salary of $3.969 for the 2026 season (he was originally supposed to be a free agent after this season)," Triplett said.

Shepherd spent the last two seasons in New Orleans and now has ties to the Saints for the next two as well. Last year, he had 1.5 sacks and 37 total tackles in 16 games played. In 2023, he had 3.5 sacks and started all 17 games for the Saints.

Keeping him around beyond the 2025 season will just give Saints' front office one less thing to worry about as they continue building this roster.

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