Michael Thomas isn't going anywhere.

Thomas is returning to the New Orleans Saints in 2023, agreeing Tuesday to an incentive-laden one-year contract.

The 30-year-old Thomas was slated to be released by the Saints and become a free agent, but will stay with New Orleans after agreeing to a $10million deal that could be worth to up to $15million, according to ESPN's Adam Schefter.

The restructured deal helped give the Saints financial flexibility, resulting in last week's signing of Thomas' new quarterback, Derek Carr.

While Carr is a significant upgrade at quarterback for Thomas over the likes of Jameis Winston, Andy Dalton and Trevor Siemian following the retirement of Drew Brees, the Saints also need Thomas to be healthy for their offense to be firing on all cylinders.

Thomas' 2022 season ended after three weeks because of a toe injury and injuries have limited him to a total of just 10 games since being named the NFL's Offensive Player of the Year in 2019, when he caught 149 passes for 1,725 yards and nine touchdowns.

A second-round draft pick in 2016, Thomas was one of the top playmakers at his position over his first four professional seasons, catching 470 passes for 5,512 yards with 32 TDs over 63 games, but in the three seasons since, he has 56 receptions for 609 yards with three TDs in 10 games.

The New Orleans Saints have plenty of experience playing without Michael Thomas, and they’ll need to draw on that again with the wide receiver scheduled for toe surgery that is expected to wipe out another season. 

Thomas, who hasn’t played since September 25, was placed on injured reserve Thursday because his dislocated toe did not respond well to rehab, Saints coach Dennis Allen said. 

"I’m not going to get into any time frames right now. I don’t know," Allen said. "He’s going to go on IR. I don’t anticipate that he’ll be able to return this year."

After missing just one game in his first four NFL seasons, Thomas was limited to seven games in 2020 and did not play at all in 2021 due to an ankle injury and complications related to surgery in summer 2021. He will have missed most of the past three seasons since his five-year, $96million extension went into effect in 2020.  

"I think Mike worked his tail off and did everything he possibly could to try to rehab it," Allen said. "This is just something that happens from time to time. It didn’t respond the way we wanted it to, so we felt like surgery was the best option to go ahead and repair it and try to get him healthy." 

Thomas had at least 92 receptions in each of his first four seasons and was an All-Pro in 2019, when he set an NFL record with 149 catches and finished that season with 1,725 yards and nine touchdowns. 

His 470 receptions from 2016 to 2019 led the league, with DeAndre Hopkins in second with 393. 

Running back Alvin Kamara strongly defended Thomas. 

"I just saw a couple comments in the media about him," he said. "Basically like, ‘You can't’ trust him, he’s not being honest about his injury, why is he waiting until now to be ruled out?'

"I’m like, man, nobody knows what we go through in here. The masses get to see Sunday. It’s a lot of s--- we’ve got to go through.

"A player like that, that’s fighting to get back, not only for his team, but for the fans and for his city… for people to be talking s---, it’s like, ah, it hurts my soul to see that." 

New Orleans Saints wide receiver Michael Thomas will miss the rest of the 2021 season having suffered a setback in his recovery from ankle surgery.

Thomas underwent the operation in July following a 2020 season that saw him battle ankle issues.

He had hoped to return for the 5-2 Saints at some point this season, but will not feature in 2021 after it was reported Thomas was dealing with a new ankle injury separate to his previous problems.

Confirming the news on Twitter, Thomas wrote: "As many of you know, early last season I injured my ankle and worked extremely hard over the next few months to get back in time to finish the season.

"Unfortunately, the rehab didn't go as planned and earlier this offseason it was apparent I would need to have a procedure to repair the injury.

"Since then, the team and I have worked diligently, day and night to rehab and get me back on the field.

"Unfortunately, there has been another small setback which we will have to address.

"To my displeasure, I will not be able to make it back in time for this season but will do everything in my power to get back to the player I have always been."

A two-time first-team All-Pro, Thomas led the league in receiving yards with 1,725 in 2019 as he set the NFL record for most catches in a single season with 149.

Injuries restricted him to 40 catches for 438 yards in 2020. The Saints, who lost starting quarterback Jameis Winston to a torn ACL last Sunday, face the Atlanta Falcons in Week 9.

New Orleans Saints head coach Sean Payton did not attempt to hide his frustration with Michael Thomas' absence from the start of training camp. 

The Saints' star wide receiver had surgery last month to repair an ankle injury that limited him throughout the 2020 season. 

General manager Mickey Loomis told reporters at a pre-camp news conference that the decision was taken to treat Thomas' injury "conservatively" in hopes that it would heal with treatment. 

Thomas participated in last month's minicamp, but the team decided afterward he needed to have surgery to return to 100 per cent. 

"It's disappointing. We'll work through it with the other players that are here," Payton said Wednesday.

"But the surgery took place, and obviously we would have liked that to have happened earlier than later. And quite honestly, it should have."

He declined to elaborate further on the timing of the procedure. 

Earlier, Loomis spoke about the team's thinking around Thomas' injury throughout the off-season. 

"We had an expectation that that would heal and he'd be fine coming into camp this year, but we get to minicamp and obviously it wasn't quite right," he said. 

"Obviously, with hindsight, we would have preferred that surgery to be earlier, in February or March, but it wasn't. It is what it is. And hopefully we'll get him back sooner rather than later."

Loomis declined to put a timeline on Thomas' potential return, and Payton indicated the team will not look for outside help during his absence. 

Thomas, 28, was the NFL's Offensive Player of the Year in 2019 after making a record 149 receptions for a league-leading 1,725 yards and nine touchdowns. 

His 2020 playing time was limited by the ankle injury he suffered in last season's opening game, as he wound up appearing in just seven regular-season games and making 40 catches for 438 yards. 

The New Orleans Saints have long since enjoyed the benefit of continuity on offense in Sean Payton era, but in 2021 they will have to contend with some significant changes.

For the first time since the 2005 campaign, the Saints will begin a season with a quarterback not named Drew Brees as their starter.

Brees' retirement was regarded by some as overdue but, if his decision to ride off into the sunset was not viewed as a damaging one for New Orleans, the loss of the receiver with whom he had built a devastating rapport certainly is a significant blow.

NFL Media's Ian Rapoport reported on Friday that Michael Thomas is expected to miss the start of the season having undergone ankle ligament surgery in June.

Thomas was limited to just seven games last year because of persistent ankle injuries and the procedure to fix those problems will, at least in the opening weeks, rob the Saints' 2021 starting quarterback of a two-time first-team All-Pro who has blossomed from 2016 second-round pick into one of the most dependable wideouts in the NFL.

Renowned for his route-running and his proficiency in making contested catches, Thomas produced at a historic level in 2019.

He broke the single-season receptions record with 149, racking up a career-high 1,725 receiving yards at an average of 107.8 per game.

Per Stats Perform data, Thomas registered a burn, which is when a receiver wins his matchup with a defender on a play where he is targeted regardless of whether the ball is catchable, on 76.1 per cent of his 184 targets.

That was the fourth-highest rate among wide receivers in the NFL. Only one player who finished above him, Corey Davis (69), had even 50 targets.

Thomas was tied for the second-most burn yards per route, trailing only Stefon Diggs (3.9) with an average of 3.6.

He got open on 83.2 per cent of his targets, though he did so with an average depth of target of 8.1 yards, illustrating the Saints' dependence on shorter passes in the latter stages of Brees' career.

Thomas will now miss out on the chance to quickly develop an even better understanding with the two quarterbacks, Jameis Winston and Taysom Hill, vying to be Brees' successor.

The frustration of that for the Saints will be two-fold. Winston's aggressiveness -- he was second in the NFL in air yards per attempt (10.7) in his last season as a starter with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2019 -- could unlock Thomas' potential as a downfield receiver to a greater extent than Brees did.

Meanwhile, Thomas' dependability would be a significant aid to an interception-prone quarterback or to a passer in Hill whose only four pro starts came last season.

Instead of enjoying those possible benefits, with Thomas on the sideline, Payton and the Saints have the imposing challenge of maintaining their offensive consistency without a Hall of Fame quarterback and without their All-Pro wide receiver.

The Saints are used to life among the NFL's offensive elite, but with the two most important parts of the equation on that side of the ball out of the picture, at least for the start of 2021, they face being removed from the top table.

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