It wasn't a big sample size for the New Orleans Saints to evaluate, but the front office apparently saw enough of Clyde Edwards-Helaire to want to bring him back. After a short stint with the team to close out the 2024 season, the Saints are bringing back Edwards-Helaire for the 2025 season.
NFL reporter Adam Schefter broke the news that the Saints are bringing back Edwards-Helaire on a one-year deal.
Edwards-Helaire joined the Saints in December after being released by the Kansas City Chiefs in the middle of December. It took only two days for the fifth-year running back to find a new home in New Orleans, a common place for former Chiefs to gather these days including safety Tyrann Mathieu, defensive tackle Khalen Saunders, and edge rusher Tanoh Kpassagnon.
The Saints liked what they saw of CEH in a short stint at the end of the 2024 campaign.
The Saints only got two games out of Edwards-Helaire near season's end, and even then the carries were limited. The production was scant, but he did put up 46 rushing yards on 13 carries and caught 3 passes for 24 yards.
While Edwards-Helaire is more of a jack-of-all-trades than a master of anything out of the backfield, his versatile skill set can be useful for most teams in some rotational capacity. It's also possible that another team could learn to use him in more effective ways than the Chiefs ever did despite selecting him in the first round of the 2020 NFL Draft.
The Chiefs brought back Edwards-Helaire last season on a one-year deal but he was on the non-football injury list to start the year. Even after he was activated, he was nothing more than a healthy scratch for most of the season before the team released him to open up his roster spot.
Edwards-Helaire played in Kansas City for most of five seasons, seeing the field in four of them, with 441 career carries for 1,891 yards, and 12 rushing scores in that span of time. He also caught 89 catches for 765 yards and 7 more scores.
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