Best landing spots for Sam Darnold in NFL free agency after Vikings are eliminated | News, Scores, Highlights, Stats and Rumors

OK, we’re getting to the heart of the matter now. Minnesota, Pittsburgh and Las Vegas are by far the three most likely landing spots for Darnold.

Might as well deal with the elephant in the room when it comes to the New Orleans Saints and Darnold. The Saints enter the offseason more than $60 million over the cap. They also have Derek Carr (who, in a parallel dimension, is Sam Darnold’s older brother) under contract for two more years, with a cap hit of $51 million in 2025.

While speaking to the media recently, Saints general manager Mickey Loomis expressed his confidence in Carr.

“I have a high level of confidence in Derek. Look, he’s done some really good things here, he’s done some really good things here,” Loomis said. “When you don’t have your top two receivers and you don’t have that special weapon in Taysom Hill and we don’t have the middle part of our offensive line and we have a rookie left tackle, there’s difficult circumstances for a quarterback, so I think he did a lot of good things.

Of course, Loomis also said he thinks the 5-12 Saints can turn things around quickly.

“I’m positive. I’m always the glass half full. Even in a 5-12 season, I see a lot of positive things we can build on,” Loomis said. “So I’m on the side of, man, this thing can go the other way pretty quickly.”

That’s the problem. Loomis and the Saints are apparently determined to blow up a bad team, take their lumps for a year or two, then rebuild. Loomis has made the cap into a pretzel so many times that it no longer makes sense.

And anyone with functioning eyes knows that the one “turnaround” the Saints are making with Carr is going from bad to worse.