Saints adding Carr helps the Atlanta Falcons in NFC South

The biggest move of the NFL off-season thus far has been the Saints signing former Raiders quarterback Derek Carr. While at first glance one might think this is bad for the Atlanta Falcons there is an argument to be made the move helps further the Falcons’ hopes of consistently winning the division.

New Orleans has needed to rebuild clearly for the past four years and continues to do anything the front office can to push the bill up a year. This time it means restructuring contracts and losing key players with the only clear improvement being Derek Carr.

It is hard to argue Carr is even a clear improvement when you consider the state of the roster. New Orleans is now scheduled to have  -$87 million in cap space next year speaking to the trouble the team continues to put themselves in.

Adding Carr to a below-average Saints team helps the Falcons in the fact it will force New Orleans to push their rebuild further without the ability to add high-impact players to a roster that is a 6-8 win team at best.

To further this point Carr has fewer playoff wins than John Wolford, Kirk Cousins, Brock Purdy, Ryan Tannehill, Nick Foles, Baker Mayfield, Marcus Mariota, Case Keenum, Daniel Jones, and Jared Goff failing to score twenty points in his one postseason start in nearly a decade.

Carr can be a solid starting option but he isn’t the franchise-saving quarterback the Saints needed to escape what will be an inevitable rebuild for New Orleans. From Atlanta’s perspective, this should be one less team to worry about competing with in the division with Tampa in full tear-down mode and the Saints clearly putting off inevitably doing the same.

Adding Derek Carr just makes the bill run all that much higher for a team that Sean Payton was wise enough to leave knowing the direction the franchise and team were heading.