Saints to work out USFL Offensive Player of the Year Darius Victor

Hey, this is interesting: the New Orleans Saints expect to work out free agent running back Darius Victor ahead of training camp, as first reported by ESPN’s Mike Triplett and confirmed by NewOrleans.Football’s Nick Underhill. Victor posted a dominant performance with the New Jersey Generals, running for 577 yards through 10 games and scoring 9 touchdown carries, which led the spring league and won him recognition as the USFL’s inaugural Offensive Player of the Year.

And he’s got some familiarity with New Orleans. Victor joined the Saints for training camp back in 2017, ranked behind Mark Ingram II, Alvin Kamara, and Adrian Peterson on the depth chart, and his position coach at the time (Joel Thomas, who interviewed for the head coaching job with his alma mater Idaho Vandals this offseason) is still on staff with the Saints. It makes sense that there would be some mutual interest here.

Running back is a priority for the Saints whether Alvin Kamara receives an NFL suspension or not; he could miss six games stemming from an arrest in Las Vegas earlier this year. Ingram missed some time with an injury after returning to New Orleans in a midseason trade last year, as did his backup Tony Jones Jr. Special teams ace Dwayne Washington hasn’t gotten many looks on offense, and while undrafted rookie Abram Smith has some promise he’s got an uphill battle ahead of him to make the roster. Adding a player like Victor to the mix makes sense. We’ll just have to see if the mutual interest materializes into a contract offer to Victor’s liking.