Drew Brees is not under contract for the 2018 season. The star Saints quarterback signed a one-year, $24.25 million contract last offseason and is still due a portion of his signing bonus that was added to the Saints' 2018 books, but he's going to become a free agent next month.

Brees has consistently expressed a desire to remain with the Saints, and according to a report from NFL.com's Ian Rapoport, that process will likely get underway at the NFL combine. Brees' representatives are expected to meet with the team "to try to hammer out what is potentially a short-term deal," Rapoport said on "NFL Total Access."

The Saints are no longer mired in the kind of salary cap hell they were stuck in for much of Brees' early 30s, but they still do not have a ton of cap space on hand. As such, they'll likely want to work out a new deal with Brees before the start of the new league year, when he would begin to carry an $18 million dead money charge on their books. 

A contract that runs longer than one year but pays more than that on an average annual basis could be manipulated to artificially lower his cap hit for the 2018 season so the Saints can address some of their roster deficiencies. According to Rapoport, that's the direction things are trending. (He stated earlier this week that Brees is not going to "break the bank" and that the team was looking to give him a deal with a salary in the low- to mid-20s millions of dollars.)

New Orleans finally has a chance to really contend at the tail end of Brees' career, now that it has added young pieces like Michael Thomas and Alvin Kamara on offense, and taken steps forward on defense. New Orleans' one-sidedness hamstrung it over the past several seasons, but an excellent 2017 draft and free-agency period finally turned things around defensively. If the Saints can add some pass-rushers and additional perimeter passing game weapons beyond Thomas, they can be an even more dangerous team in the twilight of Brees' career.