Only 10 days separate the Saints from their 2026 season opener, and the number in focus this time is No. 10.
New Orleans opens the year on the road against the Detroit Lions on Sunday, Sept. 13, and Daniel Carlson will be the man wearing that jersey. The veteran kicker arrived during training camp with the job of settling down a kicking spot the Saints wanted stabilized, and he becomes the 16th player in franchise history to take No. 10.
The number has bounced around the roster over the years, with kickers, punters, quarterbacks and receivers all taking their turn. Charlie Durkee was the first Saints player to wear it, and he was also the franchise’s first kicker.
Durkee wore No. 10 in the team’s first two seasons, then returned in No. 15 in 1971. In No. 10, he made 33 of 69 field goal tries and did not miss an extra point, going 54-for-54.
Julian Fagan handled punting duties for three seasons and averaged 41.6 yards per punt, with a long of 71 yards. Steve O'Neal wore the number in 1973, and Bobby Douglass took it on at quarterback in 1976 and 1977 when Archie Manning was out with a shoulder injury.
Douglass split time with Bobby Scott in 1976, started six of 11 games, and finished 2-4 in those starts. He added two starts the next season and left New Orleans with 1,418 passing yards, five touchdowns, 11 interceptions and a 48.8% completion percentage.
The Saints also cycled through kickers in 1978, when Steve Mike-Mayer and Tom Jurich both wore No. 10.
Together, they went just 6 of 16 on field goals in 10 combined games. Brian Hansen later gave the number a steadier run as a punter from 1984 to 1988, averaging 42 yards across five seasons and 76 games.
Doug Brien followed and turned in one of the more productive kicking stretches in team history, spending six years and 88 games with the Saints while hitting 99.3% of his extra points and 82.6% of his field goals. Brien ranks fourth in franchise history in made field goals and third in field goal percentage among kickers with more than 70 attempts, and he and Hansen sit first and second for most games played in No. 10 by a New Orleans player.
Quarterbacks came back around with Jamie Martin and Chase Daniel. Martin was Drew Brees’ backup for two years, but he only played in the 2006 season finale, completing 16 of 24 passes for 208 yards with a touchdown and an interception. Daniel served in the same backup role and appeared sparingly over four years, finishing 7 of 9 for 55 yards.
Then the number shifted to receivers. Brandin Cooks is the highest-drafted player in Saints history to wear No. 10, going 20th overall in the first round of the 2014 NFL Draft.
His rookie season produced 550 receiving yards in 10 games before injury cut it short. He followed that with team-leading production in 2015, catching 84 passes for 1,138 yards, and again in 2016, when he posted 78 receptions for a team-high 1,178 yards.
One of those catches was a 98-yard touchdown, the longest play from scrimmage in Saints history. New Orleans later traded him to the New England Patriots in the 2017 offseason for first- and third-round picks that became Ryan Ramczyk and Trey Hendrickson.
Cooks came back in the 2025 offseason after an eight-year stretch with four different teams, but the reunion lasted 10 games before he was released and finished the year with the Buffalo Bills.
Tre'Quan Smith was next, drafted in the third round in 2018 out of UCF and expected to help replace some of what Cooks had left behind. That never really happened. Smith spent five seasons with New Orleans, appeared in 67 games and posted 131 catches for 1,764 yards and 18 touchdowns.
Marquez Callaway wore the number in 2023, and Marquez Valdes-Scantling followed in 2024 after injuries thinned the Saints’ receiving group. Valdes-Scantling ended up as the team’s most reliable option down the stretch, catching 17 passes for 385 yards and two touchdowns before leaving in free agency in the 2025 offseason.
Now the number belongs to Carlson, and the Saints are counting on him to bring the kind of consistency that has been missing.
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