Luke Johnson – New Orleans Saints Final Roster Battles – RB, WR

Luke Johnson, New Orleans Saints beat writer from Nola.com/Times Picayune, joined Dave Schultz in his weekly Friday afternoon spot and discussed the final roster spots to be determined this weekend.  The 90-man roster has to be trimmed to 53 by this coming Tuesday at 3P CT.

Luke lists a few position battles so we'll start with Running Back & Wide Receivers.

LUKE JOHNSON - NOLA.COM/TIMES-PICAYUNE

I think the most interesting positions for me to watch right now are wide receiver, linebacker, and in the secondary.  

Running back, putting kind of a weird one because they've got three good ones and one of them is going to be suspended for the first three games, But do they use one of their 53-man spots on one of the guys they have currently on the roster, Ellis Merriweather or Darrel Williams. Or do they just sign one of those guys to the practice squad? 

Remember you got you can elevate somebody three times from the practice squad now. The odds of both of those guys getting claimed on waivers is like astronomically small. Usually this time of year there are some pretty good running backs that end up hitting waivers. And it wouldn't even surprise me if they cut both of those guys and look for who hits the waiver wire after the cuts are made. 

So really, I think for me, the more interesting I think are A.T. Perry and Shaq Davis are both bubble guys. I have a really hard time I have a really hard time seeing both of them making the roster. That's a really interesting one.

Shaq Davis had a great practice today. It's just I think when you're talking about who's the number five or number six wide receiver on a team, they've got to be able to do more than make some pretty contested catches. He's definitely got some skill in that area. 

But I just think this goes for both Davis and Terry, I just think that you're not making the game or the rosters of six receivers to go catch the ball but that's going to be done by Chris Olave and Michael Thomas and Juwan Johnson and Alvin Kamara and Rashid Shaheed to put goes on and on. Guys who have been in the pecking order before them. So you know, it's it's coming down to what the team thinks they can get out of them besides catching passes.