One of the bigger surprises this offseason was the New Orleans Saints and wide receiver Michael Thomas reuniting for at least one season. There were reports before the 2022 season ended that it would be Thomas’ last in New Orleans, but that ended up not being the case.
The two sides reworked his contract into a one-year deal, providing him another chance to get his career back on track. Thomas was arguably the best wide receiver in the NFL from 2016-2019, capped off with the Offensive Player of the Year award and a record-setting 149-catch season.
But, since that point, Thomas has appeared in only 10 games in three seasons, dealing with a myriad of injuries. He showed last season in the three games he was healthy that he can still have a positive impact, catching 16 passes for 171 yards and three touchdowns. Just staying on the field is a huge struggle.
Saints head coach Dennis Allen recently spoke about Thomas’ status heading into the summer. He believes that the veteran wide receiver will be limited during some of the team’s offseason program but should be ready to go in full once training camp rolls around.
“Right now, he’s still going through some of the rehab process,” Allen said during an interview on the Rich Eisen Show last week. “He had some hardware removed out of that foot that he had surgery on this past season. He’s doing really well. He’s working extremely hard. Our anticipation is that he’ll be limited throughout this offseason. But our anticipation is that when we get to training camp, he’ll be good to go.”
Having another season cut short by injury is a big part of why the Saints are going to bring Thomas along slowly this offseason. They want to put him in as good of a position as possible to be ready to go for the regular season.
“Now, when we get to training camp, we’re going to make sure that we’re smart with him in terms of getting him back in and getting him back into football shape,” Allen said. “But, look, he came off really kind of two seasons of not really playing a lot. And really had a really nice start to the season last year — it was unfortunate that he got injured when he did because going back, just the opener against Atlanta and our ability to throw contested-ball throws to him in tough situations down there in the red zone, third down, things of that nature — not having him was a big loss to us last year.
“So, our expectation is we’re going to have him back and we’re going to have him healthy. And we’re looking forward to getting the Mike Thomas that you saw three years ago.”
New quarterback Derek Carr would certainly love to have Thomas in the lineup for more than three games. With Chris Olave entering Year 2 after an excellent rookie campaign, the Saints’ passing offense could really take off if he is paired with Thomas for more than a few weeks.
The potential is there for New Orleans to have one of the best offenses in the NFL. They just need injury luck to be on their side.
