New Orleans Saints wide receiver Chris Olave puts on his helmet during the Saints organized team activities at the Saints Practice Facility in Metairie, La., Thursday, May 22, 2025. (Photo by Sophia Germer, The Times-Picayune)
STAFF PHOTO BY SOPHIA GERMER
The New Orleans Saints’ wide receivers aren’t the tallest bunch. One quick look at them confirms as much. But they might be even shorter than you realize: The Saints are just one of two teams that don’t have a wideout on the roster taller than 6-foot-2. The Minnesota Vikings are the other.
Does it matter?
Asked this question, Brandin Cooks starts to smirk during his answer.
“Not at all,” Cooks said. “At the end of the day, wideout play is: ‘Can you beat your guy in front of you?’ And I think a lot of us can do that. There’s a lot of narrative (here) that there’s not a tall, not a big guy — but we all can separate.”
What the Saints may lack in size, they make up for in speed. And that speed undoubtedly helps create separation — as was the case Thursday when Tyler Shough hit Bub Means and Donovan Peoples-Jones on deep vertical routes for splashy touchdowns. In each case, Means and Peoples-Jones beat the opposing corner off the line and had enough distance to sprint into the end zone.
And those are just the backups. Chris Olave, Rashid Shaheed and Cooks — the team’s projected top three receivers — are even faster.
“I think we’ve got some speed there that we’ll try to emphasize,” coach Kellen Moore said.
It’ll be on Moore and his staff to emphasize that in 2025. Last season, the Saints received little production from their wide receivers as injuries significantly impacted the position. The unit had just 135 catches for 1,833 yards — accounting for the second-fewest yards in the NFL. Only the New England Patriots were worse.
Cedrick Wilson has seen what Moore is capable of. The Saints wide receiver was with Moore in Dallas when the coach served as the Cowboys’ offensive coordinator and the unit was one of the league's best. Wilson said New Orleans’ new offense, as you’d expect, is very similar to that scheme.
Wilson, too, said he sees a difference in how teams treat height since he entered the league. As he enters his seventh season, Wilson recalled how the makeup of each receiver room varied as he went from one team to the next.
Before joining the Saints in 2024, Wilson spent three seasons in Dallas and two years in Miami.
“I don’t think there’s too many teams in the league that’s got that big, dominant guy that (they’re) just throwing fade balls (to) no more,” said Wilson, one of three Saints receivers at 6-foot-2. “There are a lot of offensive gurus that’s calling the play calls, and you need guys out there that know what they’re doing.”
From that standpoint, the Saints believe they have receivers who excel at understanding the game's intricacies. Moore, for instance, still remembers Olave’s pre-draft meeting with Dallas at in 2022 — when the wide receiver impressed the room with his vivid collection of plays taught earlier in the day.
Robert Prince, then Cowboys receivers coach, taught eight plays of Dallas’ offense to Olave earlier in the morning and when they reconvened later that evening, the wide receiver was able to accurately draw them back and expand on the details.
“It was very, very impressive,” Moore said. “A lot of guys understand their assignment, but he understands how it all ties together.”
Earlier in the offseason, Moore said he’d ideally like his wide receiver room to be similar to a basketball team — meaning a lineup of different shapes and sizes. But speaking Thursday, Moore said he felt there was size the Saints could utilize with Wilson, Means and Peoples-Jones.
If there is a genuine concern about the size of the Saints’ room, however, it may have to do more with a health perspective. Are their starters too small to hold up over the course of the year?
Olave (6 feet, 187 pounds) has yet to play a full season in the NFL, and his third year was limited to eight games in 2024 because of several concussions. Shaheed (6 feet, 180 pounds) played in just six games, as his year was cut short due to a knee injury. Cooks (5-foot-10, 190 pounds) also missed seven games last year with knee problems when he was with the Cowboys.
There could be on-the-field obstacles to overcome, as well. Tall receivers can — pardon the pun — come up big in the red zone and other contested-catch situations. In those gotta-have-it scenarios, the Saints’ best answer may be throwing to a tight end like Juwan Johnson — who certainly doesn’t lack size at 6-foot-4.
Still, the Saints will give their wideouts chances to create space all on their own. And they have the speed and the footwork to do it.
“It doesn’t matter the similarities that we got,” Cooks said. “We can all play in any space.”