When Teddy Bridgewater was traded to the Saints yesterday, some pundits wondered whether the 26-year-old would take over as the starter once Drew Brees decided to call it a career. However, general manager Mickey Loomis cautioned that the team isn’t in any hurry to extend the quarterback, who is currently playing on a one-year deal.
“Well, I think it’s one step at a time,” Loomis said (via Josh Katzenstein of The Times-Picayune on Twitter). “The first step is getting him here and getting to know him as a player and as a person and vice versa.”
The general manager also said it was “premature” to assume Bridgewater would be the heir apparent to Brees.
Of course, Loomis presumably doesn’t want to count his chickens before they hatch, but we can probably assume that the Saints traded for Bridgewater thinking he’d one day take over the starting gig. After all, New Orleans sent the Jets a third-rounder, which seems to be the going rate for a lower-end starting quarterback (the Browns sent the Bills a third for Tyrod Taylor). While the Saints also received a sixth-rounder in the trade, they presumably wouldn’t have given up valuable draft capital if they didn’t envision a future with Bridgewater.
Secondly, the team’s other backup quarterbacks haven’t shown a whole lot of promise during their NFL careers. With Drew Brees approaching his 40th birthday, the organization probably didn’t feel good about a potential future with Tom Savage, J.T. Barrett, or Taysom Hill under center.
At the very least, Bridgewater has already shown that he can be a competent NFL quarterback, and he seems to be recovered from a knee injury that forced him to miss the 2016 season and most of the 2017 campaign. In three preseason games, Bridgewater has completed 73.7-percent of his passes for 316 yards, two touchdowns and one interception.
