Sources: Patriots to trade Davon Godchaux to Saints for pick - ESPN

The New England Patriots have agreed to send defensive tackle Davon Godchaux to the New Orleans Saints for a 2026 seventh-round pick, sources tell ESPN.

The Patriots had given Godchaux permission to seek a trade in February.

The 30-year-old enters his ninth season and has two years remaining on the extension he signed last July, which included $16.5 million in guaranteed money. He is scheduled to earn salaries of $4 million in 2025 and $5.5 million in 2026.

The Saints will take on salary cap hits of $5 million in 2025 and $7.5 million in 2026 if they do not restructure Godchaux's contract. They entered March needing to shed at least $40 million in cap space and potentially more to sign players in free agency, but they recently restructured the contracts of center Erik McCoy and quarterback Derek Carr to open up $38 million in 2025 space.

Godchaux, 6-foot-3 and 330 pounds, played in all 68 regular-season games over the past four years in New England, with 67 starts, mostly filling a two-down role as a run-stopping nose tackle. He spent the first four seasons of his career with the Dolphins, entering the NFL as a fifth-round draft pick out of LSU in 2017. He now returns to Louisiana once the trade can be processed this week.

The Patriots are establishing a new culture, and plan to run an aggressive defensive scheme under first-year head coach Mike Vrabel and defensive coordinator Terrell Williams, so they might not be placing as high of a value now on run-stuffing nose tackles like Godchaux.

The move could indicate a defensive shift for the Saints as well.

The Saints ran a 4-3 base defense under Dennis Allen, who took over as defensive coordinator during the 2015 season and was head coach from 2022 until he was fired