Jayden Price didn’t walk into the NFL with a clean runway and a drafted-player safety net. He took the hard route, bounced through multiple leagues, kept getting cut, and still found a way to stick with the New Orleans Saints.
Now he’s on the 53-man roster.
After time with Atlanta, the CFL, the UFL and New Orleans’ practice squad, the defensive back survived the Saints’ final roster cuts and heads into September with a real job in hand. The team pointed to his journey Thursday as it continued preparing for the 2026 regular season, and while the backstory is a good one, the bigger point is simpler: Price has become a useful piece.
His path to this point has been anything but straightforward. He entered the league as an undrafted rookie with the Atlanta Falcons in 2024, was released that August, then landed on the Hamilton Tiger-Cats’ practice roster in the Canadian Football League. He appeared in one game there before being released.
From there, he moved into spring football with the Birmingham Stallions and Arlington Renegades. He played 10 games before Arlington let him go on June 10, 2025.
The Saints signed him the same day. New Orleans later released him before the 2025 season, but brought him back on the practice squad, where he spent the year developing before signing a reserve/future contract in January.
That’s a long chain of transactions for someone still waiting on his first NFL regular-season game.
Price is also part of a broader trend. According to the UFL, 45 players with modern spring-football experience were on NFL active rosters or practice squads entering the 2026 season, including 19 who made opening-week 53-man rosters. He’s one of them.
What got him through in New Orleans wasn’t sympathy. It was playmaking.
In the Saints’ preseason opener against Jacksonville, Price jumped a route and brought back an interception 11 yards. It was the kind of snap that fits what defensive coordinator Brandon Staley has liked about him: the ability to track the ball in the air and make a play on it.
And the interception wasn’t just a one-off flash. Price’s camp work pushed him into second-team snaps at the star position, which says plenty about where the coaches see him. The highlight play got attention, but the expanded role was the real signal.
Versatility may be the reason he stays. Staley said Price has helped as a gunner and returner on special teams while also showing he can line up outside at corner, inside and at safety.
For a player fighting to hold down a roster spot, that kind of flexibility matters. It gives a coaching staff options without forcing a reshuffle.
The Saints’ secondary is still changing, too. On Sept.
2, New Orleans claimed cornerback Decamerion Richardson off waivers from Las Vegas and placed safety Lorenzo Styles Jr. on injured reserve. Richardson, a 2024 fourth-round pick, played in 27 games with seven starts over two seasons with the Raiders and finished with 46 tackles and 11 special-teams tackles.
So Price has not reached a settled end point. He’s still in the middle of competition, and that’s exactly how it should be for a team coming off a 6-11 season.
New Orleans opens the regular season Sept. 13 against the Detroit Lions at Ford Field. If Price is active, it would be his first NFL regular-season game.
That would turn this from a roster story into a football story. The preseason interception was a nice start. What comes next is whether he can help the Saints in games that count.
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Richardson brings the kind of profile the Saints were looking for in that spot, with size, athleticism and special teams experience all working in his favor. It also matters because the other depth options, Mike Reid and Jayden Price, have been used more in different roles, which left the cornerback room looking thinner than ideal as the team tried to get through the rest of the roster build. [Read more 🡒]