Are Broncos, Saints looking to make another trade before regular season?

The Denver Broncos and New Orleans Saints might have another trade up their sleeves prior to roster cuts on Aug. 29.

After New Orleans traded former head coach Sean Payton to Denver in January for two draft picks, including a 2024 second-rounder, Saints kicker Wil Lutz might be following him.

Per NBC Sports' Peter King, "[General manager] Mickey Loomis may be able to trade the loser of Wil Lutz/Blake Grupe ... for a sixth-round pick just before roster cutdown. Wouldn't be surprised to see Sean Payton show interest in Lutz in Denver."

During the 2023 NFL Draft, New Orleans also sent tight end Adam Trautman and a seventh-round pick to Denver for a sixth-round pick.

Payton chose Lutz as the Saints starting kicker in 2016, and he was solid through 2020. He missed the 2021 season due to a core muscle injury and had a subpar 2022, threatening his hold at No.1 on the team's depth chart.

He's been better during the preseason, going 4-for-4 on his attempts, including a 3-for-3 performance against the Chargers on Sunday.

Grupe, an undrafted free agent out of Notre Dame, kicked the winning field goal as time expired against Kansas City. In Week 2 against the Chargers, Grupe was 2-of-2 and made his only extra-point attempt.

Lutz is a pending 2024 free agent while Grupe's average annual value on his contract over the next three years is $899,167. New Orleans isn't suffering a drop-off in production with Grupe, which makes him the smarter pick from a financial perspective.

Lutz made 74.2 percent of his field goal attempts in 2022, the lowest mark of his career. From 2016-20, he connected on 86.6 percent of his attempts, eighth-best among kickers with at least 100 field goal attempts during that span.

He's also made 97.6 percent of his extra points in his career. Since 2016, only Ravens kicker Justin Tucker (98.2 percent) has had a better success rate on extra-point attempts among kickers with at least 100 point-after tries.

Those two were teammates for a brief time. Baltimore signed Lutz as an undrafted free agent following the 2016 NFL Draft but cut him prior to the start of the regular season, which opened the door for him to land in New Orleans.

The Broncos have former Cowboys kicker Brett Maher in place as the team's starter. Maher infamously went 1-for-6 in his extra-point attempts in the postseason last season and got off to a poor start in Denver by going 0-for-2 on his field goal attempts against Arizona in Week 1 of the preseason. Kicker Elliott Fry (pulled muscle) was waived with an injury designation on Aug. 15.

Denver needs a kicker, and if it's forking over a draft pick, New Orleans should happily oblige.