The Saints spent the offseason trying to dig out of a special teams mess, and they attacked it from every angle.
New Orleans brought in punter Ryan Wright on a four-year, $14 million deal, used a sixth-round pick on LSU returner Barion Brown and then added kicker Tanner Brown late in the offseason program to push incumbent Charlie Smyth. That kind of attention was overdue after a 2025 season in which the Saints finished last in the league in field goal percentage at 71.1 percent, gross punting average at 43.3 yards and net punting average at 36.1.
The numbers behind the whole operation were even uglier. The Saints’ special teams units finished at minus-63.3 in cumulative Expected Points Added, the worst mark in the NFL by a wide margin.
Arizona was next at minus-44.2, and that gap was roughly the same as the one between the Cardinals and the eighth-worst team. It was a rough year across the board: the field goal unit never really settled in, the punting game was consistently below standard and even gave up two blocked kicks.
The best part of the group was the punt return unit, which still only finished 19th in average yards per return.
Wright looks like the clearest upgrade. Last season with Minnesota, he ranked No. 3 in the NFL in net punting average at 44.5 yards, No. 7 in average hang time at 4.49 seconds and No. 4 in touchback percentage at 4.6 percent.
He also had the longest punt in the league, a 77-yarder against the Cleveland Browns in London that traveled 63 yards in the air before rolling to the 2-yard line and being downed. Even if he doesn’t repeat that exact level, he’s a much safer bet than what New Orleans has rolled out since moving on from Thomas Morstead five years ago.
That revolving door has been brutal. Since the start of the 2021 season, 168 punters have logged at least 20 punts in a year, and the Saints’ four punters in that stretch finished 65th, 109th, 138th, 152nd and 162nd in gross punting average. Three of those five landed in the bottom 20th percentile.
The return game has also changed. New Orleans had long leaned on dangerous returners like Deonte Harty and Rashid Shaheed, but after trading Shaheed to the Seattle Seahawks last offseason, the Saints needed a new spark.
Brown should get the first crack. At Kentucky and LSU, he set the Southeastern Conference record for career kick-return touchdowns with six.
The one question is whether he’ll get punt-return chances too, since he only returned 11 punts in college.
If Brown doesn’t carry that role over, Ty Chandler is another option. He signed as a free agent and owns a 25.7-yard career kick return average in the NFL, though that comes in a limited sample.
The biggest camp battle may be at kicker. Smyth spent about 18 months on the practice squad after coming over from Ireland through the International Player Pathway, then finally got his shot and showed enough to keep the door open.
He hit a game-winner against Carolina, drilled a 57-yarder and still went 7-for-11 on field goals from beyond 40 yards. New Orleans has kept looking for competition, signing and later releasing Mason Shipley after the draft and working out Younghoe Koo.
Brown, though, is the real threat. He’s drawing Brandon Aubrey comparisons because of his background and his leg, and unlike Smyth, he’s already proven it in games. Brown made 29 of 32 field goals in the UFL regular season and followed that with two 60-plus-yard makes in a playoff game.
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Bill Barnwell even labeled the deal a shrewd signing, and the appeal is obvious: Emersons injury depressed his market, giving New Orleans a chance to add a player with real upside at a bargain price. If he comes back well, he could make this more than a depth story and turn it into a real competition with Quincy Riley for a starting job opposite Kool-Aid McKinstry. [Read more 🡒]
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