Saints are looking for Des in free agent market

Finishing the past season with the Super Bowl title, the New Orleans Saints found it still necessary to improve their team for a new season. They are as active on the free agent market as any other team and their focus is on defensive ends.


According to Saints general manager Mickey Loomis, the St. Louis Rams defensive ends James Hall and Leonard Little both are of interest to the Saints. Hall just finished a visit on Friday and Little was expected to have visit next week.

The Saints released veteran Charles Grant last week and allowed linebacker Scott Fujita to sign a three-year, $14 million deal with the Cleveland Browns. They could start looking at players with expired contracts on other teams, but their main target would still be the defensive ends, as they still have quite few choices on linebackers.

According to Loomis, the Saints could choose a linebacker from those still wearing Saints jerseys like 2009 draft pick Stanley Arnoux, 2009 undrafted free agent Jonathan Casillas, two-year pro Jo-Lonn Dunbar, 2007 draft pick Marvin Mitchell, three Year Pro Anthony Waters and veteran Troy Evans, to group with middle linebacker Jonathan Vilma and weakside linebacker Scott Shanle as starting linebackers.

Three injured Dolphins defenders returned to practice Thursday

After sitting out Wednesday, the Miami Dolphins linebackers Joey Porter and Akin Ayodele and defensive end Phillip Merling retured to practice Thursday, with all of the three wearing protective pads.


Porter had been sitting out for nearly two weeks and missed last Sunday’s win over the Buffalo Bills with a sore right hamstring, Merling left field in the fourth quarter of the same game for hurting his left ankle, and Ayodele had been sidelined with a sore back. The three joined team practice in preparation for the game against the New York Jets on next Monday night.

“Whenever you’re hurt, you realize how much you really miss the game,” Porter said after the practice. “To go out there to run around with the guys and put my pads back on definitely feels better than it did sitting on the sideline watching.”

It seemed that the three injured defenders were eager to return to field. Although they were limited in the practice, they still did a good amount of work.