The Saints are releasing cornerback Janoris Jenkins, as NFL.com’s Ian Rapoport tweets. Jackrabbit was due to earn $11.2MM with a cap hit of $14.2MM. Instead, the Saints will cut him to save about $7MM on the books for 2021. 
The Saints extended Jenkins last year, smoothing out his cap hit with a two-year, $16.75MM add-on. The new deal pushed most of Jenkins’ guaranteed cash into 2020 while effectively turning 2021 and 2022 into option years. The 32-year-old (33 in October) was claimed off waivers by the Saints in December 2019. The former Giants standout was still productive in New Orleans, but the Saints are being forced to shed veterans as the cap drops.
Starting opposite of Marshon Lattimore, Pro Football Focus graded Jenkins as the 42nd best cornerback in the NFL out of 121 qualified players last year. Lattimore — younger and cheaper than Jenkins — could be kept for the long haul if the Saints can hammer out an extension. Lattimore is currently attached to a $10.2MM fifth-year option salary. After that, the 2017 first-rounder will be extension eligible.
Next year the Saints will be Thomas, Kamara, the OL, Jordan, Davis, Lattimore, Williams and the cast of “The Replacements”. Loomis and Payton had better draft well. They do not have many picks, but almost have to hit on every one of them.
You act as if saints won’t be able to do it, there entire roster outside a few pieces were drafted by loomis. They know what they are doing
That they do, but Jenkins was not a player they wanted to release. They just had to do it for cap reasons. I don’t think the Saints will be awful completely, but they’re going to lose a lot of contributors while having to juggle some big contract negotiations with players like Lattimore (who I’m not as high on as others due to his inconsistency) and Ramczyk (who the Saints need to extend rather badly).
I’ll say again that the Peat contract was very unfortunate for New Orleans. It would have cheaper and better for the team to have held on to Warford for a year and let Peat walk than to tie up that money in a slightly above guard. If choosing between using that money for Peat or putting it into a Ramcyzk or Lattimore extension, I’d pick the latter option.
Saints have 6 picks, five of them are in the top 4 rounds. I have a feeling Saints should be able to hit on one or two of them