Rez -

I noticed that Dennis benched Alontae Taylor last night. Sean McVay/Highland Park was picking on him quite a bit but was he performing that poorly?

My concern is that once you lose confidence as a young DB, it's over.

Your thoughts?

The Saints regime is obsessed with positional flexibility to its own detriment. They don't draft or develop players to play a position, they draft and develop them to be able to theoretically fall back to another position that is not their primary skill to cover for the management if they are a bust or not ever needed at their primary position. Mickey Loomis loves to trade up in the draft, good ole 'make it happen Loomis' and this gives us less picks and thus less young depth, so Mickey's answer to this is sales pitching every player as a backup at multiple positions on the depth chart to fake the depth that his draft trades deny us. Every team has some flexibility, and every player may need to step in, but the Saints are zealots with this, and transitions that often won't work out are pursued like as if they were an article of religious faith.

Alontae Taylor is an edge corner, yet we draft him and force him into a position that is not his skill set. Headley, while a questionable punter, is a horrible holder, but we won't give the duties to one of our 3 backup QBs, because we think we can teach every old dog new tricks. Taysom Hill is anything but a tight end, but we don't want to pay big money to a backup at QB and WR so we call him one. For years on oline whenever one player went down we shuffled 2-3 around and changed the whole line to sell our BS on positional flexibility. We drafted 2 centers and played one out of position. We might have won the division last year if Peat was at his true position of LT and Hurst was LG but we never tried that because having Peat at LG helped sell our BS of our coaches genius in teaching players new positions. We gave Johnson and Ruiz bad contracts based on a small sample size of slightly better than mediocre play against weak competition because they backed our narrative of our coaches genius at changing players positions, which helped justify our ability to not need as many draft picks, so Loomis could trade up for busts.

I think Taylor is fine but he is an edge corner. If we want a slot corner, we should not trade up in the draft, and then we can select one on day 2 or day 3 in the draft with the picks we still have. But Mickey Loomis prefers golfing with a full ice chest those days, so he would rather trade up.

Maybe if Carr does not work out as a starting QB, he could hold for kicks next year. Just if it doesn't work out, move on, don't press it like Taylor as a slot corner. Taylor has looked good at edge where he could be a good replacement eventually for an aging Lattimore, a soon to be pricey Adebo, or a net us a comp pick if he looks good in backup duty at edge. Let him focus on his true skill, just like Carr as a holder.

Probably not the popular opinion but Alvin Kamara looks like he's checked out on this team and coach.

Don't be surprised if he requests a trade in the off season.

I had concerns about Taylor in the slot from the moment I started hearing he was working there. Slot corner is a completely different world. I wouldn’t say he’s done though. A benching can make you or break you depending on your personality. We won’t know that until next year though. There’s nothing he can do at this very moment to get where he needs to be as a player.

I wonder how well he'd be playing on the boundary? What is the deal with this team playing players out of position? I know that they want their best three corners on the field but with Lattimore out he should be on the boundary where he played well. Maybe this experiment of DA's isn't mad genius after all!