Below is a far-too-lengthy article on how I would handle the draft this year if I were the New Orleans Saints. The point is absolutely not to predict what the Saints will do – General Manager Mickey Loomis approaches the draft entirely differently than I do – and it isn’t to pretend a greater knowledge than I have. It is instead to do two things: Identify players I would like the Saints to draft at spots where they quite reasonably might be available, and indicate how I think the Saints should be thinking.
To be clear, I do not spend my professional career watching game film, interviewing players, seeing Wonderlic intelligence test reports, and all the other things that professional teams do. I do spend far too much time reading professional scouting reports and watching video available online – most of which (but not all of which), admittedly, includes mostly highlights but nowhere near as many lowlights. I see the best of the players, but not as many of their drawbacks.
Still, I have a pretty good record identifying players. I’m usually no good IDing offensive linemen, and with wide receivers I’m not privy to the “route trees” and so can easily miss crucial “tells” about how well they are running their routes. I’m much better with defensive players (although less so with cornerbacks, because I don’t know their responsibilities on each play) and with running backs. In previous years I wanted Alvin Kamara, Cooper Kupp, Nick Bolton, and Erick Kendricks, among others who I had rated higher than the consensus but who turned out to be top-notch NFL players.
A few other notes about strategies and theories of drafting. Especially in the first round, I absolutely hate trading up except in certain, very limited circumstances (no need to belabor them here) that almost never apply to the Saints. The cost, according to the trade-value charts that most teams use, is almost always too high. Plus, I think it’s hubristic to be so cocksure that a single player is the guy that you are willing to trade away extra choices that might hit it big. In each draft, and certainly in this one, I think there are only about five or six players who are as close to “sure things” as life offers. The Saints, at Pick Nine, are not likely to have a chance at one of them.
I would much rather pile up extra choices in the 30-50 range, and in the 50-100 range, than to choose ninth in the first round rather than, say, fifteenth. All the players from choices seven through about 30 are, in my book, almost equally likely to produce a Pro Bowler.
Next, I firmly believe in the “best player available” approach, not the “position of need” approach. If the player is good enough, he’ll be of help even if the team already has other good ones at his position. Plus, injuries happen all the time, and quality depth is really important.
Finally, I am categorically opposed to “reaching” for a quarterback just because the Saints suddenly have an extremely unsettled quarterback position with Derek Carr perhaps out for the season. This is especially true this year, because I think none of the QBs aside from Cam Ward are definite first-round talents, but I think about five or six are all bunched up in terms of likelihood of being quality NFL starters eventually. I do think that Shedeur Sanders and Jaxson Dart likely also will be chosen in the first round and Tyler Shough, an excellent player, is likely to go in the first 40 picks. But I don’t necessarily see any of those three as being actually worthy of being first rounders.
And if the Saints don’t get a starting QB in the draft, but are able to considerably bolster the rest of their roster, I am perfectly content with the Saints signing a remaining free agent as the stopgap guy for one more year. Aaron Rodgers might be too expensive, but I wouldn’t mind Carson Wentz, Teddy Bridgewater, or Tyler Huntley rather than reaching and missing too early in the first round. (Also in the back of my mind is the idea that if the rest of the team is strong enough, then next season there may be a way for the Saints to draft Arch Manning. Dreams sometimes do come true.)
All that said, my rules for drafting are as follows. I chose the “consensus big board” (not any individual writer’s “big board”) of The Athletic as my guide for the first 100 available choices, and, since that one stops at 100, I then used the NFL Mock Draft Database “consensus big board” for all the other picks. Obviously, a few players in the latter already will have been listed in the former, but, well, this is merely a “what if” exercise anyway, so we’ll ignore that anomaly.
Obviously the big boards aren’t predictors of where players will be drafted (considering team needs, etc.), but instead of where they fit if every team drafted solely according to the “best player available” regardless of positional need. So a player on the Athletic’s big board at spot, say, 60, might actually already be gone by pick 40 – but for my purposes, I’ll pretend that nobody higher on the board than the Saints next pick will be available, and that everybody further down the board than the Saints next pick will still be there. But I am not allowed to see WHERE players are on the board beyond the pick number at hand – so, for instance, I can’t make a trade while “knowing” that Player A will still be available at choice 22; I can only know what has gone before.
For all trades, I religiously follow the numerical values of this “Draft Trade Value Chart” and try to get as close as possible to a numeric equivalence on both sides. For trades involving next year’s picks rather than this year’s, I cut the trade value rating of that choice in half.
And my rule is “no Saints trade ups in the first round,” but only trades down, and in later rounds I can trade up no more than three spots at any one time (for the reasons given above).
I absolutely did not manipulate anything in the draft to figure ahead of time which players would be available when, but stuck to the script of the big boards. As the draft approached, the first consensus board kept changing, and my draft selections changed with it.
I did, however, have a basket of four players on whom my assessment is particularly high who all could be available between picks 9 and pick 20 (I wouldn’t trade back farther than that), and several others I would particularly target anywhere from picks, say, 28, to, say, 56. The former include (with much more info on one or more of them later) DB Jahdae Barron of Texas, defensive Edge rusher Jalon Walker of Georgia, and DB Nick Emmanwori of South Carolina. and (in the latter part of those picks 9-20) Edge Donovan Ezeiruaku of Boston College.
Alas, the draft order is a moving target, as the “big boards” update their list rather often in the final two weeks. Still, I’ll go with what I have, when I have it.
Without further ado, then after this nearly interminable introduction, my picks are as follows. (See my next entry here at QuinHillyer.com.)
