Willie Gay Jr. has already chosen which jersey number he'll use with the Saints

 Willie Gay Jr. has already chosen which jersey number he'll use with the Saints

That didn’t take long. The New Orleans Saints announced that they were signing former Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Willie Gay Jr. to a one-year contract on Wednesday afternoon, as had been previously reported, and by Wednesday evening Gay had already chosen his new jersey number.

It wasn’t a hard call to make. Gay is listed on the Saints website roster in No. 50, the same number he used in Kansas City. Backup linebacker Andrew Dowell had used it for the last few years, but he’s ana unrestricted free agent coming off a major knee injury. If Dowell is coming back he’ll have to pick a new number.

This may seem inconsequential, and it kind of is — what matters more than how players look in a jersey number is, of course, how well they’re performing — but it’s still an interesting thing to keep tabs on. And there was some speculation that Gay could use a different jersey in New Orleans than he did in Kansas City.

Gay wore No. 6 in college at Mississippi State, which was vacated when the Saints released safety Marcus Maye at the start of the new league year. So both the jersey number he previously used in the NFL and the one he wore in college, which only became available for linebackers last year, were on the table. Obviously he’ll be sticking with No. 50, which is a better look for an off-ball linebacker like Gay than something in the single digits.

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