K Major

Those first two Saints draft picks in 2024 …

Should either START or get in rotation as rookies.

Bryan Bresee was a solid 2023 selection. He’s looks like the truth.

AsylumGuido

Looks like we're trading all our picks the next two years to go and get Daniels.

rezburna

I’m cool with that.

BakoSaint

I don't think Daniels is realistic with the other moves we are making and our needs. We are already over the 2025 salary cap and moving on from Carr in 2025 would entail an about $50 million dead cap hit. We badly need oline to protect Carr or any other QB and pass rush to combine with our good secondary to make our defense work, and if we use our 1st round pick and other picks trading up to land Daniels, we can't use any of those picks on oline or pass rush this draft or even next draft.

So what would be the play here? Go into 2024 and 2025 with a QB controversy? Pay Taysom Hill $10 million to be the joker QB, Derek Carr $40 million to be the pocket QB, and spend two years of 1st round picks and more on Daniels who could be both in the future, but can't be either now unless we bench one of those highly paid guys? We would be spending more resources on the QB position than any team in the NFL while dividing those resources 3 ways and ignoring glaring weaknesses in the trenches for multiple years. And the same would likely continue in 2025 given our cap situation. Then maybe in 2026 if we made a lot of cap sacrifices we could eventually go through a 2 year rebuild to pay off the dead cap of cutting Carr and Hill in the 2026 offseasons and emerge able to start adding the oline and pass rush pieces to compete with Daniels from 2028-2029. Meanwhile if Daniels works out, we completely miss the ability to use his rookie contract years to our advantage? It makes no sense. Either rebuild and be able to purge Carr's salary at least by 2025 by not restructuring him this year (we already restructured him) or ride with Carr and take a QB with the early pick we get later if he crashes, or we lose a lot during a rebuild year after cutting him.

I don't even think Loomis or DA are seriously considering taking Daniels. What I think they are doing is PR. Keeping the fans interested. It was a rough season. The Saints were not fun to watch. LSU was. The idea of Daniels is the bread crumbs to tide fans over with excitement for a few months of the offseason while the reality of restructuring Carr, Ram, and a bunch of past their prime players with another year of DA as head coach sets in. We don't actually need to draft Daniels for speculation of a move to excite fans. It's like a celebrity dating rumor, it keeps our name in the news even if it has no basis in fact. It's free advertising for Mickey Loomis' Ford Pinto.

Meanwhile DA and Loomis may actually be thinking of trading up for a flashier oline or pass rusher to mortgage the future and win an extra game or two now to buy themselves an extra year. Another Marcus Davenport or Trevor Penning style hail mary to save their jobs. That might not be palatable to fans. But if they sell the idea of trading up with the shiny prospect of drafting fan favorite Daniels, even if its unrealistic, that will force many fans to accept the idea of the Saints trading up, and they can bait and switch the move to trade up for Daniels into trading up for their next Davenport. In reality we should stand pat and draft at our original position so that if we fail, there is an insurance policy in the form of a high 2025 draft pick so that our GM and HC job openings are actually attractive to candidates when they open up. Of course Loomis and DA would probably rather trade our future picks to make those jobs unattractive so that we will have to retain them because "who else can we get, we won't be high on anyone's list."

Mr.Riaton

I hope we can get a monster DT in the draft to pair with him

BakoSaint

I don't know what we are doing at the DT position. Drafting another seems like too much. We restructured both Saunders and Shepard. Bresee flashed as a backup. Roach had the highest PFF rating by far but is perhaps an afterthought because we are broke so you don't keep the best man you keep the one you can't afford the dead cap to cut. Drafting the position again before we really know what we have in last years 1st round pick seems insane.

Mr.Riaton

Well Bresee led DTs in sacks with 4.5, so I’d say thats a little more than just flashed. He has shown he’ll be a force with a great future as long as he stays healthy. Saunders and Shepard are fine for now, but in a couple of years it’d be nice to have two young studs anchor that position for the future while adding to the DE position.

BakoSaint

I hope the best for Bresee. But realistically I think we need to hold off on the annointing oil. Truth is he was neither a bust nor breakout. 4.5 sacks is nice but not enough sample size to prove anything great. It’s equivalent to Trequan Smith’s 5 receiving TDs as a rookie, as sacks and receiving TDs are similar scarcity. Bresee’s pff score was like 50. He needs to start before we even start getting too excited.

Mr.Riaton

I’m not really interested in his pff grade as a rookie. I’m not saying he came in and played as a pro bowl level DT, but I’m very optimistic from what I saw on game day. But to put it in perspective, cam Jordan had 1 sack, 18 tackles, 16 pressures his rookie year vs bresee had 4.5 sacks, 12 tackles, 18 pressures.
I feel very confident, barring injuries, that he’ll be a hell of a player for us and I really want another promising rookie DT. Hell, I want a whole youth movement along that line.

BakoSaint

There are some people on this forum who say all our members opinions are garbage and they would trust Mickey Loomis over all of us because he is a professional with untold expertise and resources. I guess that is my position with PFF. They watch every play 10x in slow motion or whatever and have a large staff developing a grading system. They are able to attract the respect of many experts and many subscribers. Their numbers, although not perfect, seem to align with what I see and be a better guide than optimistic fans. They have competed with other services and risen to the top. So while I think Mickey Loomis is a joke who lucked into his job and is sitting around all day golfing and chugging bottles of Beam, and others think he has a PhD in football, I guess I am on the the opposite side with pff and respect pff over random board members eyeball test. Clearly Bresee got a few sacks, but I think the low grades mean there are issues in other parts of his game. If he was a walking sack machine why wasn't he starting over low budget journeymen? How was he in run support? Did he blow assignments? For example, Bresee had 6 penalties as a backup vs 7 total penalties for all our other starting and backup dline combined. Call me back when his sack numbers at least exceed his penalties. To me, 4.5 sacks and 6 penalties sounds like a net loss. Hopefully he can clean up the penalties over time, but maybe when he does he gets less of a jump and gets less sacks too.

https://www.footballdb.com/stats/pen...?tm=20&yr=2023