The extension Chris Olave has been waiting on since spring now has a reported timetable. Larry Holder of The Athletic, in comments relayed Monday by Bleacher Report, said the Saints are likely to reward their top receiver with a new contract within the next couple of months. “There’s an expectation that this should happen before the start of the 2026 campaign,” Holder said.
That squares with how both sides have talked all offseason. Olave said in June he expected a deal before training camp, and general manager Mickey Loomis has expressed optimism an agreement gets done. Camp opens July 29, and the two sides have not yet closed the gap — Olave remains on the books at his $15.49 million fifth-year option, which doubles as the team’s highest cap charge for 2026.
The receiver has made the wait more expensive. Olave set career highs across the board last season with 100 catches, 1,163 yards and nine touchdowns, then earned his first NFL Top 100 selection at No. 64 this month. Holder framed him as the clear No. 1 target for second-year quarterback Tyler Shough, and added the caveat that comes with any receiver deal of this size: “He’ll need to maintain that pace, and stay healthy, to live up to a hefty payday.” The injury history is real — an injury-riddled 2024 kept Olave off the field for much of that season — but 2025 answered most of the durability questions a front office could ask.
From a cap perspective, the timing makes sense. New Orleans already created 2026 breathing room this month by restructuring Alvin Kamara‘s contract, and a multiyear Olave deal signed before Week 1 would replace a rigid option-year charge with a structure of the team’s choosing. The receiver market has moved well past the option number — Jaxon Smith-Njigba’s $42.15 million per year sits at the top of it — so the question in negotiations is less whether Olave gets paid than which tier of that market New Orleans is willing to put him in.
The window is now defined: sometime between the opening of camp next week and the September opener. For a team that spent years pushing cap problems into the future, paying its best young player on time would be the cleaner kind of business.
