Debating a franchise’s Mount Rushmore is always a tricky business, and for the Saints it gets even messier once you start separating the full 60-year history from the modern era. The old-school case still has plenty of weight, especially when the Dome Patrol comes up - Rickey Jackson, Sam Mills, Pat Swilling, and Vaughan Johnson all belong in that conversation.
But if the focus is the last 30 years, the picture changes fast. That stretch includes the rough end of the 1990s, the post-Katrina turnaround, and the sustained run of relevance that followed.
At the top of the list, there really isn’t much suspense. Drew Brees is the obvious face of the modern Saints, and in a lot of ways he is the standard everyone else gets measured against.
He arrived in 2006 with Sean Payton and helped do something bigger than win games: he helped steady a city still dealing with Hurricane Katrina. Over 15 seasons, he turned New Orleans from a franchise that lived in the margins into one that expected to contend.
His credentials are the kind that don’t need much dressing up: Super Bowl XLIV MVP, two-time NFL Offensive Player of the Year, a first-ballot Pro Football Hall of Famer, and multiple 5,000-yard passing seasons that changed the way modern offense is viewed. Brees didn’t just raise the bar. He set it.
On the defensive side, Cameron Jordan is the name that fits best. Drafted in the first round in 2011, he became the kind of steady, elite presence the Saints had rarely enjoyed outside the Dome Patrol years.
He passed Rickey Jackson to become the franchise’s all-time official sack leader, and his résumé also includes eight Pro Bowl selections. Just as important, Jordan’s durability and leadership carried across multiple eras of Saints football, and he made New Orleans feel like home in the process.
The third spot goes to Alvin Kamara, whose arrival in 2017 gave the Saints’ offense a different kind of edge. As a third-round pick, he immediately won Offensive Rookie of the Year and brought a style that changed how the team used the backfield.
His balance, vision, and slippery running style made the screen game a weapon, and his production has been impossible to ignore. Kamara owns the franchise records for rushing touchdowns and total touchdowns, and his six-touchdown Christmas Day performance stands out as one of the defining explosions of the era.
Deuce McAllister and Mark Ingram II both have real cases, but Kamara’s peak and production give him the nod here.
The final spot belongs to Jahri Evans, the kind of choice that doesn’t make headlines but makes football sense. Drafted out of Bloomsburg University in 2006, Evans became a core piece of the Super Bowl-winning team and one of the best guards of his generation.
He started 169 games for the Saints, made four First-Team All-Pro teams, and earned five straight Pro Bowl selections. Protecting a shorter quarterback from the interior was his job, and he handled it at a Hall of Fame level for a decade.
There are plenty of worthy names left off this list. Marques Colston is still the most prolific wide receiver in team history and a defining figure of the early Sean Payton years.
Michael Thomas set the NFL’s all-time single-season receptions record in 2019 with 149 catches. Demario Davis has been the emotional center of the defense since 2018, playing at a First-Team All-Pro level in the post-Brees era.
Willie Roaf was a Hall of Fame tackle who dominated in the late 1990s. And both Deuce McAllister and Mark Ingram II left lasting marks as power backs and community figures.
But if the assignment is the modern Saints Mount Rushmore, the four names that best capture the story are Brees, Jordan, Kamara, and Evans. They reflect the rise from irrelevance, the championship breakthrough, and the bond between the team and the city that defined this era.
In Other News...
Saints Fans May Need Patience With Oscar Delp In Year 1
Oscar Delp is likely to spend his first NFL season learning on the job, which is usually how it goes for a third-round tight end trying to carve out a role in a crowded room. The Saints view him as a long-term piece with real athletic upside, but early on he is expected to sit behind Juwan Johnson and Noah Fant while handling the kind of work that keeps him on the field and in the playbook.
For now, that means Delps value may show up more in the run game than in the box score, with only limited chances to make an impact as a receiver. He had a relatively modest pass-catching rsum at Georgia and still needs time to sharpen the details of route running and feel, so the Saints appear willing to let his development unfold while they chase a playoff position. [Read more 🡒]
Saints Fans Already Have Every Reason To Defend Tyler Shough
The conversation around rookie quarterbacks has already turned into a familiar NFL pastime, with Tyler Shough, Jaxson Dart and Cam Ward getting stacked against one another before either has had much time to settle in. For Saints fans, the part worth watching is how quickly Shough has become a target for comparisons, especially when the national chatter keeps treating the draft class like a hierarchy instead of a group of young passers still learning how to survive in the league.
Shough and Dart are also set to meet on the field this season, which only adds more fuel to a rivalry that media and fans are eager to make bigger than it is right now. The broader case for both quarterbacks is simple enough: each has reasons to improve in Year 2, with Dart getting help back around him and Shough working with new pieces in the offense, but the way they are being ranked and discussed has already given New Orleans supporters plenty to push back against. [Read more 🡒]