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The offensive lineman was set to make a base salary of $6.15 million in 2016, along with a per-game roster bonus that could’ve totaled up to $400,000.

By releasing Sitton, the Packers will save roughly $6.55 million against the salary cap.

The massive 30-year-old had started 110 out of the 112 regular season games that the Packers had played since becoming a full-time starter on the offensive line in 2009.

Sitton had been so good over the past four seasons that he was voted to the Pro Bowl three times (2012, 2014-15) and voted first-team All-Pro for three straight years (2013-15).

Can the Saints possibly even to afford to outbid all of the the other teams that will be trying to entice him with a big contract for his services, now that he is a Free Agent?

Who knows.

But they’d better get someone in here to play guard — someone better than every guard that they already currently have (not counting the brand new UDFA rookie that made the Final Roster in Landon Turner) on the team — if they want to keep QB Drew Brees together in one piece.

As someone who has seen many, many Pro Football games and especially those of the Saints over the years, I can assure you that no NFL and definitely not any Saints team that ever had any type of post-season / Playoff success, had an O-Line like the one that Brees has played and been playing behind the last 2 seasons.

You can’t put a small band-aid over a wound that needs to be stitched up, and hope somehow that it will magically heal.

That was the Saints’ approach to one of their team weaknesses coming into the off-season and it underscored their lack of urgency in the NFL Draft to select one, following the release of veteran Jahri Evans back in February.

Presumably the Saints felt like they were okay with the guys that they still already had, in veterans Tim Lelito and Senio Kelemete, and 2nd year O-Lineman Andrus Peat, who was drafted to play right tackle but whom the Saints decided to turn into a starter this year at right guard.

As we know now, both Lelito and Kelemete struggled at times, while Peat was way in over his head at right guard and is now being moved to left guard.

Oh boy.

But we expect that the Saints are now just going to manage to overcome all of that, with the regular season just 7 days away — and somehow magically have an offensive line that suddenly plays just adequate enough just to prevent Brees from getting killed?

We can only hope that’s the case.

Either that, or break down what every barriers are necessary to bring Josh Sitton to New Orleans so that you ugrade one of your biggest weaknesses, big-time.

One or the other must happen, or else you’ll see that expression on Drew Brees’ face at the photo at the top of this page, a lot more times often than not in 2016.

Sure, the defense is improved. In fact, it’s VERY improved.

But can you really say that the defense is capable of winning a game by themselves or on their own yet?

And please don’t kid yourselves.

Yes, they’ve improved. But we all know that they’re not going to ever be talked about in the same breath as the Steel Curtain or the Purple People Eaters.

This defense is nowhere near the caliber of play of those legendary and dominant teams of long ago. But this scrappy Saints defense is improving with each additional time. It’s evident.

The question becomes: can they play well enough to compensate for the offense’s shortcomings — in other words, play well enough and keep the game close?

Last year as we saw, more often times the Saints lost those games when they could not.

Does that mean that perhaps this year is different, and the Saints will win a few extra games this year that they would have lost last year — because of their improved defense allowing them to keep games close at the end and give the offense a chance to win?

Certainly, and you can expect it to happen maybe once or twice.

But the 16-game NFL season is a long one and the Saints will need a break or 2 here or there, to make the NFC Playoffs as a Wild Card.

Any Saints fan who thinks this team is a `12-win, NFC Super Bowl contender needs to put away the whiskey bottle.

Besides you may want that whiskey bottle back when the Saints are getting blown out in a few months from now, so that you can either take a drink from it to numb the pain or when you decide to hurtle it directly at your TV screen out of disgust.

Let’s hope that’s not the case.

In any event, as I do always at this time of the year in what’s becoming an annual tradition of mine here at Big Easy Believer, it’s time to reveal my yearly prediction of how the Saints will finish in the upcoming year, the 2016 NFL season.

Early on in the off-season, I was leaning towards picking the Saints to be improved enough to be a 10-win team and a possible Wild Card Playoff participant.

Obviously the Saints’ uninspiring 0-4 Preseason performance where they honestly looked flat out bad at times — as was the case in some bad losses last year in the 2015 season at Philly, Washington, and Houston — wasn’t very conducive to making anyone feel better about where they are headed.

This has “the feel” of an 8-8 team.

8-8 teams usually are strong on one side of the ball, and weak on the other.

Or in the case of some other teams like the Saints, it’s the little things — things like mounting injuries, a hole at guard and weak O-Line play overall, or a improving but suspect defense that isn’t good enough to effectively stop teams a majority of the time and clearly isn’t ready to dominate anyone yet — that cause you to fail as many times that you manage to overcome them.

Can the Saints be better than 8-8?

I think that they can, if they get a few breaks here or there that they quite honestly haven’t had for at least the last 2 and a half years now, since retired CB Jabari Greer’s injury.

The problem is that then again, maybe they won’t get any breaks that go their way.

This will get me in trouble with anyone who already thinks that I’m a “homer” after being born in raised in the same city and region that this team has represented for the last 50 years, but I’ll give the Saints a benefit of a doubt and say they finish at 9-7 — with a possible chance (however big or small it ends up being) at taking the final NFC Wild Card in the NFC.

But that’s stretching it a bit.

In fact, it’s stretching a lot.

We’ll see what happens…………

FINAL PREDICTION: