The New Orleans Saints have quite a significant pool of pending free agents entering the 2025 offseason, with a whopping 19 players off contract for the next season. There are quite a few significant players among this group including both starters and backups, and one of the most important ones is cornerback Paulson Adebo.
In a recent article detailing the top 101 free agents for teams to choose from by NFL.com writer Gregg Rosenthal, he ranked Adebo at 36th among his un-signed peers. Rosenthal detailed the reasoning behind placing the young cornerback at this position on his list:
"A great example of the inconsistency in cornerback play, Adebo bounced from benched to star status in New Orleans before a slow start in 2024 ended with a broken femur. He’s shown he can play at a high level."
Overall, Rosenthal is not entirely off base: Adebo is a very hit-or-miss cornerback who makes an exceptional amount of plays on the ball, but also struggles immensely with penalties, picking up nine of them in only seven games, only one short of his career-high in 2022. This makes him an interesting player to take a shot on in free agency, as he will likely be asking for a decent price tag on his new deal, but if the penalties can be negated or minimized, he could be one of the better players at his position in the league.
The issue is that this has been a consistent issue for Adebo, who has 34 career penalties (27 accepted), or approximately one per two games played. In 2021 and 2023 he had seven and eight penalties respectively, but his 10 in 2022 and nine in only seven games for 2024 are both pretty brutal. This takes a lot of coaching to remove from a player's game, however, with the Saints bringing in a nearly entirely different staff for 2025, maybe he is worth re-signing and seeing how he performs under new defensive coordinator Brandon Staley.
