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Good news guys!!! We drafted a guard in the 4th round... Bradie James got picked right after us!!! ISN'T THAT GREAT!?!

I was getting worried. I really wasn't sure about our offensive line going into this draft. I had it listed as our BIGGEST problem area. But now that we got these two new OL, our offense should be able to get just good enough to let the defense carry us into the playoffs... right? Guys..... ??

F-cking shoot me now.

:casstet: :casstet: :casstet: :casstet: :casstet: :casstet: :casstet: :casstet: :casstet: :casstet: :casstet: :casstet: :casstet: :casstet: :casstet: :casstet: :casstet: :casstet: :casstet: :casstet: :casstet: :casstet: :casstet: :casstet: :casstet: :casstet: :casstet: :casstet: :casstet: :casstet: :casstet: :casstet: :casstet:

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First Henderson gets passed for O tackle now Bradie for a guard. Both OL seem to be good players who will contribute and this pick certainly was a good value for the spot, but when you look at need and value together James was tough to pass on.The Saints said need would not determine who the pick would be they felt good enough to pick the player they had higest on the board at any given pick, looks like they ment it or, Maybe coach Jim is planning a come back and does\'nt want to much compition for a roster spot. I\'ll wait and see how it all works out before calling for blood, A couple of good June 1st signings particularly at LB and all this looks great, Nothing more done to help the defense and the view changes to a much more somber vista.

Here is an evaluation of Holland, Pompei loves him


Round 4, Pick 5


MONTRAE HOLLAND MEASURABLES
Height: 6-1 Weight: 333
40-yard dash: 5.15 10-yard dash: ÂÂÂÂ*
20-yard shuttle: 5.00 60-yard shuttle:
Broad jump: 7-6 225 lb. bench: 30
3-cone drill: 8.45 Vertical jump: 28
Wonderlic: 19 20-yard dash:
Player evaluation:
Montrae Holland

War Room analysis
Run blocking: Is a squatty mauler with great bulk and power. Can be overpowering at the point of attack. Pushes the pile and drives legs well to finish. Has good body strength. Is aggressive and plays with a mean streak. Lacks great athleticism and struggles in open field at times, but is good in the short area. Grade: 8.2

Pass blocking: Lacks height, which limits him to playing guard. Not an elite athlete, but shows good footwork in the short area. Has a quick set. Shows good lateral movement and can mirror and slide. Doesn\'t get overpowered by bull rushes. Wins almost every battle once locked on. Grade: 7.3

Initial quickness: Isn\'t great in this area and struggles against some top one-gap defensive tackles. Shows good leverage coming out of stance. Has good quickness in pass protection and almost always gets into position as a short-area run blocker. Grade: 6.5

Strength: Is a wide body with great mauling skills. Plays with a wide base and good leverage. Has excellent lower-body bulk and power. Can knock defensive tackles back with initial punch. Grade: 8.0

Mobility: Had left knee scoped twice in 1999, ankle surgery in \'00 and right knee scoped in \'01, posing durability concerns. Moves well for size, but isn\'t great in open field and struggles to consistently hit moving targets. Moves well laterally and excels in the short area. Grade: 6.1

Bottom line: Holland raised his value by steadily adding strength and quickness as a three-year starter in college. He projects as a second-round prospect; it would be surprising if he stays on the board beyond Day 1.

Dan Pompei analysis
Is a powerful, explosive and nasty run blocker. Also is solid in pass protection. Consistently wins battles, and can make defenders crumble. Plays with balance and toughness, and moves well for a big man. Had a good senior season, and raised his stock during Senior Bowl workouts. Has a wide body, but lacks ideal height. Has some trouble with quick defensive tackles.
Pompei\'s OG ranking: No. 2


[Edited on 4/27/2003 by saint5221]

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Do we not need a LB or CB? MAybe there is something out there we just do not know. Is there a chance that any LB\'s or CB\'s may be cut after June 1?

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THIS WAS A TOTAL WASTE. SAINTS GETTING THESE OL JUST SO THEY DON\'T HAVE TO PAY THE OL THEY WORTH IS DUMB. I HATE THIS NEW GUY LOOMIS HE IS AS DUMB AS DITKA. I ASK WHAT IS THE SAINTS STRENTGH COMING IN THE DRAFT? WAS IT OL? THEN WHY IN HELL DO YOU PASS ON BRADIE JAMES,AND RASHEAN MATHIS? :casstet: I CAN NOT EXPRESS MY DAMN ANGER!!!!!!!!!

BENSON NEED TO JUST GO KISS RANDY MUELLER @$$ AND HIRE HIM BACK CUZ THIS DRAFT WAS JUST A WASTE OF @#$%ING TIME. THE ONLY THING I CAN SAY GOOD BOUT WHAT LOOMIS DID WAS MAKE A OK DEAL WITH AZ, BUT WHAT THE &%$# WAS ON HIS MIND WITH THESE $#@ PICKS

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You can never have enough Guards. A guard is far more worth his weight in gold than a LB or S,or CB. :mad:

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Rod, you must have missed something. At least 2 of our Offensive line men either are no longer with us or are unsigned. Bubba Miller retired and Fontenot isn\'t signed. We need linemen. Just my opinion.

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Actually, coming into free agency the ONLY starter on our line who was unsigned was Fontenot. We dealt Turley and signed Gandy, so again, coming into the draft the only position in question was center... which we still haven\'t drafted. Are linemen nice? Sure. But if you rank OL as a bigger need than DT, MLB, or CB you\'re plain nuts. Not to mention that signing OL after the June 1 cuts is likely to be much easier than signing an LB, DT, or CB. Maybe the Saints know something I don\'t, but...

I mean hey, they just drafted a DE. Next thing you know someone will be telling us all how big a need DE was... we only have Howard, Grant, and Whitehead right now. We NEED another DE.

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TELL ME THIS JOE, ARE THESE OL GOING TO START OR SIT THE PINE THIS YEAR? DID BUBBA MILLER PLAY LAST YEAR? DID THAT EFFECT THE OL? AS FOR CENTER (FONTENNOT) THE DAMN IDIOT GOING TO SIGN A FA CENTER ANYWAY, THEN WHY DRAFT 2 OL? :casstet:

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NOW THAT I RELEASE A LITTLE ANGER. I FEEL A LTTLE BETTER,CUZ NONE OF THE TEAMS FROM THE NFC SOUTH LOOK LIKE THEY HAVE A IMPACT PLAYER. THE SAINTS HAD ALL KINDS OF CHANCES WITH TOP PICKS IN 3 OUT 7RDS. LET ME STOP BEFORE I GET UPSET AGAIN. GOOD LUCK SAINTS

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Well let\'s see now. Since i\'m Not the head coach of the Saints, I don\'t feel like i\'m capable of judging who will start and who will not start.However I do know this. With the apparent retirement of Miller and the not signing Fontenot I feel that the drafting for the one side of the ball that kept un games last year was a good move. The reason for drafting 2 offensive linemen to me is simple. It allows them to move players on the line to positions that they are more likey to be able to play. Yes we need help on defense, I agree with everyone on that point but I also feel like you can\'t let the one good thing from last year fall apart just to try to fix something that\'s already been helped some at least. Without an offensive line how good will the offense be? So are we supposed to give up the one thing that kept us competative last year? I think not.

Call me ignorant if you please but having been around football on different levels, I do know something about the game. Until they call me and ask my opinion, I have to believe they are smarter than I am. They work with these guys day in and day out.
Am I over joyed at the picks they made? Maybe not totally but I do see the need for the players that they chose.
Last but certainly not least, there is the concept of drafting for depth. That is what I believe they have done. Keep the offense well stocked. It\'s all we had last year. Contrary to popular belief, I think the defense will be better, maybe not filled with Pro Bowlers but better just the same. :)

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OK - fine... you make a valid point. What makes you think the defense will be better? Also, do you see either of the OL guys we drafted this year starting?

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OK JOE, THE SAINTS STATER OL WAYNE GANDY LT, SPENCER FOLAU G, KENDYL JACOX CENTER?,LECHARLES BENTLY G, VICTOR RILEY RT. NOW HERE ARE THE RESERVE WALLY WILLIAMS (G), SCOTT SANDERSON (G, T) RE-SIGNED 4/1. YOU KNOW THEY\'RE GOING TO PICK UP A CENTER IN THE FA. NOW TELL ME WHY 2 OL?

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I would think it should be a huge hit to Haslett\'s ego that a defensive minded head coach has such a brutal defense. He should have been 100% focused on drafting defense with the first 4 picks and filling depth needs later. He should be ashamed of passing on all the impact defenders he let slip by.
Nice draft by Parcells by the way. That is how you draft Jim. Take some notes.

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Ok well let\'s get started. One of the reasons I feel the defense will be better is becausewether we keep Norman Hand or not, he will be in better shape. I think it has been abundantly clear to him and Grady that the heavy lunch bunch will not be tolarated this year.I don\'t know if you remember the first year Norman was with us but he played much better than last year. I think there is a very good chance of Sullivan getting playing time this year. I also feel like our corner backs are better than they were last year. I think Ambrose will be a valuable pickup for us. He will not make rookie mistakes. He will allow Craver to get valuable time to learn the position much better. I think the trade for Jones alone will make our Defensive backfield much better than it was last year from speed alone.
I also don\'t think the deal with Victor Green from the Patroits is finished yet. I feel like they were waiting for the draft to be over to see who was available. I think he will sign with us in the next 2 weeks if not sooner. When you put all this together , it takes pressure of the linebackers so they can roam the short middle and outside of the field. I also know the Venturi is going to simplify the defense to make it easier to play. And I think you might admit that if nothing else at least they (linebackers) will be faster also. So new and better players, more simple defense, and a years experience in the system and the defensive linemen being in better shape will make a big difference.
As for starting the new draftees on the offensive linemen, why not? Bently started last year. I think he did pretty well. Who knows? Maybe the offensive line might be even better than it was last year. We\'ll just have to wait and see. :)

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I do not believe our secondary will be good beacuse Jones and Mitchell will have to clean up all of Carter and Ambrose\'s mistakes. Great safeties do not help if you play man-on-man on regular basis

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Now, the best defense in the league, Tampa Bay, does not play a lot of man-to-man and we have seen their sucess.

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Another kudo has to go to Mariucci. Nice draft right up to round 7. Ben Johnson was one of the top ranked OL. He steals him in round 7. Rogers, Bailey, Redding, Holt, Pinner.....
Nice draft to fill alot of needs with quality at each pick.

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Just one question Cookey? Where do you get the idea that Carter and Ambrose will make so many mistakes? You\'re taking about 2 very good corner backs. They may have slowed a bit but you won\'t see them leaving very many people wide open for a pass.

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YOU DIDN\'T ANSWER MY QUESTION JOE. LET ME SIMPLIFY IT FOR YOU. WHY PICK UP A OL IN THE 4TH WHEN BRADIE JAMES A PLAYER WHO CAN HELP IN DEPTH IF NOT START MLB IS STILL ON THE BOARD?

[Edited on 27/4/2003 by rodjmaw]

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Hey Gator, I have 3 ex-wives. This is easy.LOL. You and Lumm are right Dallas and the Lions had great drafts.

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I very well maybe wrong, I do believe Jones will help on deep passes and those broken down running plays. Crter and Ambrose will do fine on plays within 10 yards, besides some players like Price, who will break before Carter and Ambrose will press trying to compensate for their lack of speed

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Ok let me try this again. I\'m not a coach of the New Orleans Saints. I thought I did answer your question. We drafted a need player to shore up the one good part of the team we had.It has already been stated that the offensive linemen that we drafted are already better than some veterans we have. I am relatively sure we will see some cuts in the summer cutdown. I too liked Bradie, and would have loved to see him with the Saints but again, I think we needed to fix the offense with the loss of some key players.
I hope you understand it this time. If not, I tried.

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Cookey, I think these guys are a little smarter than you give them credit for. They have experience to go a long way.

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I am ot saying they are dumb are they will not be good players. I am saying that if I was Michael Vick, throwing a deep post to Peerless Price would not scare me against either one of those guys.

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JOE IF YOU SCROLL UP I LIST THE STARTER AND BACK-UPS. THEY\'RE NO NEED FOR 2 OL. NICE TRY ANYWAY FOR TRYING TO EXPLAIN THESE BONE HEAD MOVES.

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You know what....just to defend Loomis for a minute....I like the trade. Moving up to 6th overall, advancing 27 positions in the second, and adding a 4th round pick by giving up a mid-first is a pretty decent use of the value. Nice job by Loomis getting us reasonable positioning by dropping the pick. Then we waste all of that effective jockeying by taking players 10-15 spots ahead of their time. Aargh!!

What I\'d have done.....
1-6 Marcus Trufant-CB
2-37 Chris Kelsay-DE
3-swapped pick 86 & 7-231 to GB for pick 79 and taken Kenny Petersen- DT/DE
4-102 Bradie James-ILB
5-155 Tony Pashos-OT
6-203 Kareem Kelly-WR is a good pick

Just me a each spot based on what was drafted ahead of us at that time.

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Not just the Falcons, any team with a fast WR and the QB able to throw the deep ball. Jones and Mitchell will help, but they may not prevent it. I do not think many QB\'s want to throw the deep ball against Woodson, Bailey or Springs

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I think both Jones and Mitchell will turn into very good safeties in this league but Mitchell, being so raw will get burned a number of times in his first year as a starter, and the knock on Jones is, although he is extremely athletic, he lacks great cover skills. Both will be big hitters and hopefully have a few recievers hearing footsteps which will help over the course of the year.

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And Rod, if you chose to look and read you might see that the draftees are projected to be better right now than Riley or Jacox. Wally Williams is getting up in age. Hasn\'t played in a year. I guess we should just keep these guys and let them play out their years of life?

P.S. Rod, speak to me in a civil tone and I will do the same for you. Treat me like an idiot and we\'ll just have to see who knows what.

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Good points, JOESAM. You\'re like a batter facing three pitchers at the same time and it looks like you made it to base each time. It is important to look at the big picture ( HUGE picture if we still had Hand.) The point is, we don\'t know what goes on behind the Saints closed doors. Randy Mueller at this point looks like a genious. But who of us knew that AB would be a promising qb? Who of us knew who AB was when Mueller got him? In retrospect, Randy looks brilliant to us now. Lets let the season speak for itself then make our judgements on our current GM.

[Edited on 28/4/2003 by JOESAM2002]

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Hey JOE - I hear what you\'re saying and I can\'t disagree with you. The guys we drafted to play OL may be able to come in and play right away (a la LeCharles Bentley - last year\'s second round pick who may have been the best rookie we had last year).

HOWEVER, defense was the need coming into free agency. I\'m not saying that we should have ignored the offense... actually ignoring the defense was how we got ourselves in this situation. Still, I believe that the Saints could have done more to improve the defense. Whether it be through free agency, the draft, suiting Jim Haslett up at linebacker... whatever. My point is that the key to the Saints\' success in \'03, at least in my mind, is how much the defense can improve.

That being said, you can\'t look at our moves thus far and be happy. Well, maybe you can, but I\'m not. Sullivan - good player who we may have overvalued. Tebucky Jones - good player who hasn\'t quite proven to be consistent yet, that we may have overvalued. Don\'t get me wrong, I like both of those moves. Ruff seems like a bust to me. Granted, I haven\'t seen him play. Hopefully the coaches are right... but the fact that he was beaten out for a starting spot last year, and his best numbers EVER are worse than Clemons\' numbers last year at MLB make me very nervous. As for our corners... well, we\'ll see. I am doubtful that Dale Carter will ever return to form. He\'s the perfect second corner, playing behind a true shutdown guy in the mold of Woodson, or McAllister, etc. Thomas and Ambrose should do OK, but neither will ever be better than average in the NFL again. Craver is a total wildcard, but what else is new, our whole defense is wild cards. I just hope the inexperienced guys like Mitchell, Allen, Hodge, Sullivan can play well... and the new guys - Ruff, Jones, Ambrose - can play to potential.

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On defense we all hope the new guys will produce in a manner that will make the Saints Super Bowl contenders. You are right Whodat, we do need help on defense, I\'ll never argue that point. I think we have gotten some help thus far. The big question I have still is, We only have so many picks in the draft with only so much money to spend. It\'s hard to go out and find an all star defense in this league. Free agency can only help so far, let\'s face it other teams got rid of these guys for some reason. A few were because of the hit to the salary cap but i dare to say that some were because they just didn\'t fit into the system they were in. If that\'s not the case how did the Raiders get so good. They took a few old veterans,and I mean old, threw in some people no one else wanted and last but certainly not least a few draft choices. It got them to the Super Bowl. The thing is Al Davis has been doing this for years. This is not something new to the Raiders. They were operating like this when I was a kid. Somehow they just keep plugging guys into their system and keep going.
Sure I\'m disappointed in the Saints not picking people I thought would be the last pieces in the puzzle but i\'m not going to throw the baby out with the bathwater either. Offense got us wins last year and with the exception of a few new pieces on defense it looks like we may have to depend on them again this year.
We could start blaming everybody from Benson right down to the towel boy for the short comings of this team. In the end though I think the players have to take most of the blame for our full out crashes in the later part of the last 2 seasons. The coachs sureley don\'t come up with a bad plan on purpose. These guys sit for hours on end putting plans together to get them where they and we (as fans)want to be. I\'m fairly certain that they don\'t sit in the draft war room saying \"this guy looks like he\'ll flop for us\". The coachs and scouts spend countless hours evaluating players both free agents and draftees seeing who SHOULD fit in our system. Any one who has ever achieved anything will tell you it takes the right people, the right preperation and good ole fashioned luck to make everything come together.
I guess Jim Rome says it about as good as can be said about the draft. He said\" the only thing for sure about the draft is that the Jet fans won\'t like who they choose.\"
I just hope that as Saints fans we never get that tag put on us.
We can always agree to disagree. Let\'s see how the season goes before we ridicule everyone in the Saints organization. :)
GO SAINTS!!!!
P.S. Whodat that last statement wasn\'t meant to target you by the way.

[Edited on 27/4/2003 by JOESAM2002]

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Not necessarily. Sounds to me he disagreed with the trade and wanted to stay put to draft two players that can help the team (immediately) instead of one. A player vs. players.

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Lest we forget. Loomis has never been a personnel man, he\'s a bean counter. His forte is making money and salary cap. I know I don\'t want a short order cook fixing a gourmet meal for the President. Well maybe?

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For what it\'s worth, I\'ve got to agree with JoeSam on this one. Please don\'t flame, but JoeSam and Gator have been taking a lot of flack on this. Since I\'ve been thinking along similar lines to what they\'ve been saying, I felt I should chime in and show a little friendly support.

I was pretty damn negative at first (Boss Bailey/Stinchcomb, in particular the Bradie James skip, etc) - I was yelling around the house at one point, threatening doom and damnation to Haz and crew. But I\'ve settled down since then. And the more I\'ve recovered from shock, the more I\'ve actually started reading up on the picks and thinking about things, the more I believe the team did a decent job in this draft.

Regardless, time will tell soon enough. If we end up 32nd in defense this year, then I know that I was wrong. But if we can end up somewhere around the middle of the pack, but still dominate on offense, then I\'m right. We\'ll see.

June 1st is still lurking out there, let\'s see what happens... :cool:

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Three things that will happen:
1. time will tell
2. farts will smell.
3. water will seek it\'s level.
I guess time will tell us if this draft (fart) will smell And this season will seek its level. ;)

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I had no idea you were so eloquent, oh noble Shakespeare?!

Or perhaps - \'if if\'s and but\'s were all candies and nuts, we\'d all have a merry Christmas\'.

Or even better - \'there once was a maiden from Mit, who dined.......\'

Aw, nevermind.

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Or we\'d have burnt ashes. :D
As far as limricks are concerned I have a few. LOL

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We\'ll have to share a few of those sometime, oh learned colleague. Though I doubt this message board would be the most appropriate place for sharing such specialized wisdom.

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On this too, you might be right. LOL :D