Mickey Loomis: Saints Counting on Michael Thomas, Marshon Lattimore
Saints general manager Mickey Loomis joined SiriusXM NFL Radio this morning with hosts Solomon Wilcots and Bill Polian. The segment focused on the state of the team's roster, the acquisition of Derek Carr, and having a younger team that's balanced by the presence of veterans. He also talked about the impact of getting back Michael Thomas and Marshon Lattimore.
"We're counting on a couple guys that have missed time with injury," Loomis said when talking about the outlook for the team.
"Mike Thomas has missed the better part of the last two years and we're counting on him to get healthy and to get back to his form. We're counting on Marshon Lattimore, who missed 6 or 8 games last year with some fractured ribs and a lacerated kidney. We're counting on those guys to get back and perform at the level they've performed at in the past."
Loomis pointed out younger and ascending players on the roster being key for the team's success as well like Trevor Penning, Chris Olave, Rashid Shaheed, and Erik McCoy. Loomis was asked about Thomas' status relative to his injury and where he is now approaching training camp.
"I think he's coming along, and I think he would tell you that things are going well and we're excited and optimistic about where he's going to be when we begin training camp."
It's absolutely no secret that getting Michael Thomas and Marshon Lattimore back will be huge for the Saints, and we didn't exaggerate how good Thomas looked in training camp last year. He was absolutely dominant, and it showed in a big way in the regular season opener. As for Lattimore, the Saints were able to get by defensively without him, but when he came back you saw a big difference.
We'll have one more round of OTAs next week followed by the team's mandatory minicamp from June 13-15. After that, we'll see where things are at when training camp rolls around, but the news on Thomas seems to be promising after having hardware removed from his foot recently, but we'd also expect the Saints to be cautious in ramping him up.
