I posted this in another thread, but I thought it deserved some more attention because I haven't really seen anyone talk much about it.

People seem willing to give Mickey Loomis a pass for drafting poorly even though he's in charge of the scouting and player personnel departments. He's not a talent evaluator himself, but as a GM he has to know if his guys are getting the job done and they hadn't been. Unfortunately for the Saints, the mass scouting department firings happened about 4 years too late.

So if he's not a talent guy, he's been labeled as a money guy. A "cap genius" whose talents have created the term "Loomising" that has gone on to mean myriad things, good and bad. I argue that his genius is... well, not genius. If he doesn't have a future HoF QB on his team to make up for across the board talent deficiencies, Loomis is former Jets GM John Idzik - a cap guy who sucks at managing a salary cap.

The aura around Payton and Loomis has really worn off in my opinion. I defended Loomis for a long time because even though common knowledge said Saints were in "salary cap hell," he always found a way to sign big free agents to shock the world and somehow stay under. Now, I'm on a completely different end of the spectrum.

Since I've had more time to look objectively at his work post-2009 it's been really shocking. The drafting is the biggest and most obvious failure and that falls on him and Payton, but outside of that he hasn't ever taken a balanced approach to free agency and extending his own players. For example, look at the biggest additions from FA class of 2012...

Curtis Lofton - 5 yrs/$27.5 mil
Ben Grubbs - 5 yrs/$36 mil
Brodrick Bunkley - 5 yrs/$25 mil
David Hawthorne - 5 yrs/$19 mil

What's amazing is these guys are taking up just about $17 million in cap space THIS YEAR. Three aren't on the team any longer and Hawthorne has only been starting because of Ellerbe's injury. It's one thing to fail in a draft class where you miss one a handful of cheap, mostly unknown players, but it's an entirely different thing to fail in a free agent class where the players are proven commodities that you're investing over $100 million in over the next five years.

Then let's look at his recent player contract extensions...

Jimmy Graham - 4 yrs/$40 mil ($20.9 mil guaranteed)
Junior Galette - 4 yrs/$41.5 mil ($23 mil guaranteed)
Zach Strief - 5 yrs/$20 mil (age 31 at signing)

Jimmy and Junior have already been discussed at length. I have nothing to add there. It's clear why they were bad deals. Strief on the other hand is a little different. He is/was (you decide) a good player, but you don't commit $20 million over five years to a guy who is already 31, especially when the next year you draft his replacement in the first round. It's almost as foolish as dumping a bunch of money into your already stable and inexpensive running back corps! Oh wait...

It's pretty clear that Benson has lost his marbles because if he knew what the hell was going on, he would have fired Mickey Loomis by now.

tl;dr version

Loomis has thrown around tons of cash for players that are not on the team anymore. Somehow he gets a pass for drafting poorly AND mismanaging free agent signings where he has shown almost no discipline. That is a bunch of BS.