Saints punt Adrian Peterson to Cardinals after five weeks, get conditional pick back

The Saints have, for years now, juggled potentially catastrophic cap issues and a dearth of defensive talent. The 2009 Super Bowl squad is largely dismantled, but the Saints have done enough wheeling, dealing, and wheedling to at least stay entertaining and within striking distance of .500, which is something plenty of teams with far better cap situations haven’t been able to manage. If they weren’t our detestable rivals, I’d have to respect that.

Since they are our detestable rivals, though, and because recent years have been marked by some really weird and bad moves, let’s go ahead and have a laugh right now. At, I dunno, the fact that the Saints are trading Adrian Peterson after five weeks of the 2017 season. They got a conditional pick back, per ESPN’s Diana Russini.

This move reeked of desperation and oddness from the moment it was made, and as Falcons fans, we all knew that. We saw the Falcons go out and invest in Steven Jackson, who was largely past his prime, in search of a bruising back and marquee name for the fanbase. The baffling part of this for the Saints was that they already had Mark Ingram and added Alvin Kamara in the draft, giving them two younger, obviously better backs to work with. Peterson isn’t an asset in the passing game and hasn’t been good in a couple of seasons, so he was never a logical fit for the New Orleans offense in the first place. I suppose at least the Saints got something out of him.

Peterson, meanwhile, will go to a place that will at least make an earnest attempt to give him the carries he’s looking for. He gets a minor win out of this, and minor wins were all that was ever likely to come out of this particular signing.

Now we just need free agent moves to backfire spectacularly for the Buccaneers and Panthers and we can have a lot more fun here.