Six years ago, it appeared that the Steelers had found a keeper in second-round receiver Chase Claypool.
Now, Claypool continues to look for a path back to an NFL roster.
Claypool, who hasn’t played in an NFL game since 2023, had a tryout on Tuesday with the Saints, per multiple reports. Veteran receiver Josh Reynolds, a nine-year veteran who played for the Jets in 2025, also tried out for New Orleans.
The Saints recently lost first-round rookie Jordyn Tyson to a hamstring injury. He’s expected to miss two months.
Claypool scored 11 touchdowns as a rookie in Pittsburgh. By 2022, the Steelers had decided to move on, recouping their second-round pick (which ended up being the first pick in round two) from the Bears. During the 2023 season, the Bears traded Claypool to the Dolphins for a swap of sixth- and seventh-round picks.
An injury in 2024 derailed an opportunity with the Bills before the season started. He has not been on a roster since then.
Reynolds, a fourth-round pick of the Rams in 2017, has also played for the Titans, Lions, Broncos, and Jaguars.
Saints Clips
Saints first-round pick Jordyn Tyson’s NFL debut reportedly won’t be coming in the early part of the 2026 season.
NFL Media reports that Tyson is set to miss around two months as a result of a hamstring injury. The wideout was injured during a joint practice with the Jaguars last Thursday.
That timeline would carry into October and makes Tyson a prime candidate to open the season on injured reserve. The Saints will be able to designate him as eligible to return if they wait to put him on the list until the cut to 53 players later this month. If he does go on injured reserve, he will have to miss at least four games before returning to action.
It’s a big blow to a Saints offense that was hoping to pair Tyson with Chris Olave to give quarterback Tyler Shough a pair of dangerous receiving threats in his first full season as a starter. The answer to how big a blow won’t be known until we see when the Saints are able to ramp Tyson back up into a contributor this fall.
Tyler Shough did not play any quarterback for the Saints on Saturday, but the two players in contention to be his backup both saw action against the Jaguars.
Spencer Rattler started the game and went 8-of-11 for 42 yards while losing a fumble on one of the two sacks he took. The team’s opening drive ended with a touchdown, but it started on the Jacksonville 9-yard-line and ended after one Audric Estime run. The Saints also kicked a field goal while Rattler was in the game.
Zach Wilson replaced Rattler and led two scoring drives in the second quarter. They moved the ball again in the third with Wilson at the helm, but a missed field goal kept the Saints from putting more points on the board. Wilson finished the day 11-of-16 for 145 yards and a touchdown. After the game, Wilson was asked if he thinks he made a case for jumping ahead of Rattler on the depth chart.
“I don’t think about it like that,” Wilson said. “Obviously I’m here to compete. I would love to be the two, I would love to find my way up there. That’s why I chose to come here, to have an opportunity to compete, but it’s out of my control. . . . I’m still young, but I feel like I’ve been able to play in a lot of games and see a lot of different things, and so I feel like it’s been able to slow down a little bit for me. Being able to use that to my advantage and just see how good I can be and, at the end of the day, whatever happens happens.”
Head coach Kellen Moore didn’t commit to any changes to how the quarterback reps are doled out in practice and said he thought Rattler did some positive things, but a repeat of Saturday’s outing in the team’s next preseason game could lead to a change in plans for the 53-man roster in New Orleans.
Broncos coach Sean Payton has a history with Atlanta, dating back to the intense rivalry between the Saints (whom he coached from 2006 through 2021) and the Falcons. Payton’s current team was back in Georgia tonight for a preseason game.
And Payton couldn’t resist making a crack about the crowd in Atlanta, or the lack of one.
“There’s a lot of people dressed up as empty seats today,” Payton said at a halftime interview, via Awful Announcing.
The official game book for the Broncos-Falcons contest lists attendance at 68,183. That may have been the tickets sold, not the tickets used.
Whether the seats will be filled during the Falcons’ regular-season home games depends on whether the team performs better than it did on Friday night. Preseason or not, the Falcons trailed 24-0 at the half. The final score was 27-7.
The Falcons have reason for optimism. They finished in a three-way tie for the NFC South crown. If they can get something/anything out of the quarterback position, they could win the division in 2026.
They’ll need to win early in the season to get the fans on board. Three of the first four games are on the road, and three of the first four teams they play made it to the playoffs in 2025.
The Saints will not have one of their key rookies on the field for a while.
Head coach Kellen Moore told reporters on Friday that first-round pick Jordyn Tyson will miss time with the hamstring injury he suffered during Thursday’s joint practice with the Jaguars.
While Moore did not provide a timetable for Tyson’s recovery, he noted the receiver’s injury could potentially linger into Week 1.
“We’ve just got to let these experts evaluate this, and then we’ll put together a plan,” Moore said, via Katherine Terrell of ESPN. “Not going to jump to conclusions. I don’t have a doctor in front of my name, so I’m not going to jump to put together a timeline on it.”
Moore noted that this injury is unrelated to the previous hamstring injuries Tyson has suffered throughout his playing career.
“I think my understanding of this one, any player that was put in his situation where your foot slips and you get shoved from behind, this has nothing to do with Jordyn’s history,” Moore said. “Any player in that situation probably has the same diagnosis coming out of this.”
Tyson was the No. 8 overall pick of this year’s draft, with the Saints set to pair him with Chris Olave to provide a pair of strong receiving targets for young quarterback Tyler Shough.
Saints quarterback Tyler Shough will not play in the preseason opener.
New Orleans head coach Kellen Moore said today that backup quarterback Spencer Rattler will start Saturday’s preseason game against the Jaguars.
Shough is the established starter after a promising rookie season last year. It’s not clear whether he’ll play at all in the preseason, but it won’t be this week.
Rattler is competing with Zach Wilson to be Shough’s backup. The Saints also have Hunter Dekkers, who signed with the Saints as an undrafted rookie last year and spent most of the season on injured reserve, on the 90-player roster.
The Saints have an injury concern with one of their key young offensive players.
Receiver Jordyn Tyson exited Thursday’s joint practice with the Jaguars early with what head coach Kellen Moore called a leg issue in his press conference.
Per Mike Triplett of NewOrleans.Football, Tyson suffered a hamstring injury that is hopefully minor.
The No. 8 overall pick of this year’s draft, Tyson figures to be a significant piece of New Orleans’ offense in 2026.
Moore said the team will likely know more about Tyson’s status tomorrow.
The Saints will host the Jaguars for their preseason opener on Saturday afternoon.
The Saints signed free agent defensive tackle Kahlil Saunders on Wednesday, the team announced.
In a corresponding move, the Saints placed offensive lineman Dillon Radunz on injured reserve.
Radunz, 28, left practice Saturday with a knee injury, and an MRI confirmed a season-ending torn anterior cruciate ligament. Radunz also tore an ACL in 2022 with the Titans.
He started 10 games for New Orleans last season.
Saunders joins the Saints after participating in training camp with the Dolphins, where he signed as an undrafted free agent following the 2026 draft. He played five seasons at Kentucky, appearing in 51 games with 12 starts.
Saunders recorded 77 tackles, 12 tackles for loss and 4.5 sacks in his college career.
Cornerback Terrion Arnold’s search for a new team brought him to New Orleans on Tuesday.
Saints head coach Kellen Moore said that they visited with the 2024 Lions first-round pick, but did not work him out during his time in town. The Lions waived Arnold after he was arrested on armed robbery and kidnapping charges this spring.
“Just collecting as much information as we can, having as many conversations with people who have spent a lot of time with him over the years,” Moore said at a press conference. “Obviously there’s an outside of football part of this that has to be added to this, but I felt like we had a good visit with him. Good experience.”
Moore also noted that Arnold has history with Saints corner Kool-Aid McKinstry from their time together at Alabama.
Arnold, who has also met with the Seahawks and Texans, is expected to meet with the Giants next.
After practicing briefly with the Lions in training camp, quarterback Teddy Bridgewater decided that it’s time to retire. Bridgewater had an NFL career that spanned more than a decade with eight different teams, but it was one five-week stretch that two of his coaches recalled most when asked about his retirement this week.
In 2019, Bridgewater was the backup quarterback with the Saints, and when Drew Brees missed five games, Bridgewater stepped in and led the Saints to a 5-0 record. At the time of Brees’ injury, the Saints were 1-1 and had just been blown out by the division rival Rams, and the season could have rapidly gone downhill. But Bridgewater made sure that didn’t happen.
Lions head coach Dan Campbell, who was assistant head coach on that Saints team, said one of the reasons he wanted Bridgewater as his backup quarterback in Detroit was that he knew how dependable Bridgewater could be in a pinch.
“I’ll never forget in 2019, when Drew got injured, we had just gone out to the Rams, got beat out there, Drew hurt his thumb and was out five weeks. Teddy stepped in and we won five in a row. That was Teddy,” Campbell said.
Broncos head coach Sean Payton, who was the Saints’ head coach at the time. reflected on how much Bridgewater meant to that Saints team.
“Our experience, my experience was fantastic,” Payton said. “We made a trade for him . . . He was a great asset. A really, really good teammate. He had some rare leadership skills. . . . He was important, he was on our team during a ton of wins. When Drew got hurt he went 5-0, and I think he’ll find his way back into coaching or some role with football. I’m proud of him, and the type of injury he had was significant, young in his career.”
A devastating knee injury during a preseason practice with the Vikings in 2016 changed the trajectory of Bridgewater’s career, and he never became the franchise quarterback he was expected to be in Minnesota, or anywhere else. But no one doubted his hard work, leadership and character, and he had all the traits that coaches love in a backup quarterback. Those coaches are expressing their appreciation for Bridgewater as he walks away from the NFL.
