Back in 2023, the Atlanta Falcons looked at their hated rivals and saw something they liked: A pair of defenders. The team signed away Kaden Elliss and David Onyemata from the Saints that year, adding a pair of stout options in the middle of the defense, and got multiple years of quality play out of them. Now they’re both gone.
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Onyemata signed with the Jets earlier this week—excuse me, he unofficially signed, owing to legal tampering—and now Elliss is headed back to New Orleans.
Sources: The #Saints are signing former #Falcons LB Kaden Eliss to a 3-year, $33M deal.
— Jordan Schultz (@Schultz_Report) March 10, 2026
Eliss, who hasn’t missed a game since 2021, has recorded three straight 100-tackle seasons. He added 3.5 sacks and 6 passes defensed last season as well. pic.twitter.com/0TfB5J6VNg
While Jeff Ulbrich had tremendous praise for Elliss this offseason, Ian Cunningham was more measured about the possibility of his return. The team’s free agency moves thus far paint a picture of a team evaluating everything and trying to set themselves up to have a war chest of picks and cap space in 2027, so paying $11 million per year for a 31-year-old linebacker was clearly not in the cards. The Saints, who just emerged from an extended cap heck and clearly believe they can contend now, have no such qualms.
He’ll leave the Falcons with 380 combined tackles, 12.5 sacks, and two interceptions, having played 51 of 51 possible games for Atlanta. The Falcons scooped him up after three quiet years and a breakout campaign in New Orleans, and there’s little question they got their money’s worth from Elliss even if the team as a whole underperformed.
I won’t sugarcoat the on-field impact: Losing Elliss hurts. He was not a standout in coverage, but pretty much everything else you’d ask an inside linebacker to do was very much in his wheelhouse, including plus work against the run and rushing the passer effectively. The Falcons won’t be able to replace him with just one player, as Ulbrich alluded to, which means former Texan Christian Harris is probably just the first salvo at inside linebacker. If Troy Andersen were to be healthy and Harris is effective in Atlanta, perhaps that’s enough to give the Falcons quality play beside Divine Deablo, but I wouldn’t bet on that outcome and neither will the Falcons. Atlanta is losing one of the defenders who really made Ulbrich’s defense tick a year ago, and it’s fair to expect that the linebacker group won’t be as strong or as versatile without significant investment that may not be coming.
Elliss will be missed, in short, and the fact that he’s back to playing for the hated Saints means it’s hard to wish him well. The hope is that the Falcons are, after the dust settles on this offseason, still a clearly better football team than New Orleans, but much remains to be done before we know that.