AsylumGuido

The order selected.

jnormand

Lmao!

Cruize

I genuinely see positives from every one of them. I believe Neal was an absolute steal.

neugey

1) LT Kelvin Banks Jr (presuming he is our day 1 starting left tackle)
2) LB Danny Stutsman (if things pan out right, could be Demario's successor)
3) CB Quincy Riley (we need this depth with Adebo & Lattimore gone)
4) RB Devin Neal (finally some reliable productivity behind Kamara)
5) QB Tyler Shough (combine ducks aside, possibly the most accurate QB on our roster. I think he's better in-games - let's hope)
6) DT Vernon Broughton (we can bring him along slowly if needed, good pick for the long-term)
7) TE Maliki Matavao (the "molotov cocktail" will hopefully compete with Holker, good practice-squad type
8) S Jonas Sanker (no room on our depth chart unless he does shockingly well in camp)
9) EDGE Fadil Diggs (I just don't trust the Saints drafting this position lately)

SmashMouth

BakoSaint

There is an element of truth to this. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder on these picks and every evaluation is different. However, I do believe in grading drafts but my approach would not be to grade perceived value at each pick which cant be that great in more than one opinion because any player you draft, every team before you passed on them.

What I would grade a draft on is what you might call macro strategies, especially involving the first round since the value of that pick is so much higher. The absolute worst thing you can do in the first round is trade future first round picks at a discount, especially picks that could end up being top 5-10 or even #1. The best thing you can do is acquire those picks from teams with a potential to collapse. By this measure I would grade the best draft as the LA Rams, A+, and the worst as the Atlanta Falcons, F-. The Falcons wanted a second pick in the 1st round to draft another pass rusher, I believe at 26, and they got some guy who is supposed to be good, but 25 other teams passed on him, so a lot of people have to be wrong for him to be earth shattering. Meanwhile all the Rams need for that pick to be very very high is for a QB who has torn the same ACL twice and only played a few ok NFL games to either get hurt or prove ineffective, led by probably the worst experienced active head coach in the nfl based on winning percentage, an offense with no standout receivers, and a running game and oline that carried the team and cant afford to regress. Trading future picks like that is desperation and desperation often leads to collapse. And maybe the guy the Falcons took is a good pass rusher, and maybe they have the beat case scenario and the pick they traded next year ends up being 26, but whose to say an even better pass rusher isnt available at 26 next year in what is widely considered a deeper draft, and they trade more picks like their 2025 second round to get the swap. Meanwhile in the worst case its super easy to see the Falcons trading or cutting on IRing Cousins, having Penix get hurt, and being 2-15 earning the #1 overall pick for the Rams, who draft a 15 year franchise QB successor to Stafford or flip the pick for 3 1st rounders. At least if you trade future picks to take a QB young can hit the jackpot since its such a high value position, but to trade a potential future #1 overall pick, which could easily be #1 overall given that Penix is one of the least experience QBs in the league and Morris is one of the worst coaches in the league, for a late round pass rusher your own team passed on in the middle of the round, to me its just insane. F for Falcons.

If you think about it, the worst draft in recent Saints history may be 2022, which was probably initially graded as the best, but where we traded a future 1st that turned into Jalen Carter and more for non-QB talent that have had very mixed results.

While taking different players at different picks can be a matter of judgement, and a team may see certain players value much higher than what analysts do, I think trading future 1st round picks when they trade at a steep discount to present picks can be more objectively graded as value destruction, the equivalent of taking out a high interest payday loan. A team will often argue that although they traded next years 1st for a 2nd this year, or next years 1st, this years 2nd, and more for late 1st rounder this year, it is justified because they have such a high grade on the player this year that they are worth that higher value. The problem is, this assumes that next year, when that pick would have came around, there would not have been any player available who they graded even higher than that pick. In fact, unless every other team in the league drafted off their board, there would usually be a player they graded even higher than that pick available, so generally big costly trades up using future 1st round picks are not justified. They destroy value. Their true purpose is GMs and Coaches who fear their jobs are at risk now or who have no patience to accept immediate criticism for the slightly increased probability of one off year, mortgaging the future at the franchises long term expense. Yes there are a few cases where trading up worked out, but usually where the cost was more limited and involved a QB, or was very limited. Any pick can be a hit so its bound to work out sometimes. But for every time you get a Mahomes or Kamara, there will be many more times that you give up the choice of Caleb Williams or Jayden Daniels and much more for Bryce Young, or three 1st round picks that likely could have pushed you over the edge for a Super Bowl for Trey Lance, or you give up Jalen Carter and more for Trevor Penning. Trading future 1st round picks is less of a matter of it being in each evaluators eyes and more objectively stupid because its not just a difference of opinion on one player. For it to really make sense, there has to be a difference of opinion on an entire draft class, that the next draft class will be so much worse its worth giving up several later picks to move to a later pick in the present draft over a probably higher pick in an upcoming draft, or multiple picks in upcoming drafts. Teams can have differences of opinion on one player, but when you talk about entire draft classes the sample size is much bigger and the variation should be much less, and every 1st round pick could be #1 overall with injuries and parity in the league, or a player could always be available that your team grades 10-15 picks higher that where you are able to draft them, so if you trade next years pick for pick 25 because you can draft your player #15, next year your player #5 may be available at that pick #15 and taken by a rival.

Some other macro strategies I believe in are that it is a bad draft strategy to invest too much in frequently injured players, put too many high picks in lower value positions, or pay SEC price for small school projects that should have gone in later rounds because the hype gets out of control.

Since the Saints neither traded away not acquired future picks, I grade them average in that respect.

Since the Saints main injury prone pick was in the 2nd round and doesnt have the worst type of injuries and they didnt trade up for him and the Saints first 3 picks were all high value positions from decent schools, I grade the Saints average to slightly above average in that respect. In a grading system where C is truly the average, I grade the Saints draft C+ or B-.

My favorite pick is Banks in the 1st round because he fills a need. After that I am not really sure. I feel we have a log jam at DT but I could see value in the 3rd round pick if he is truly given a chance to start over Bresee, who is a liability against the run, unless Bresee makes major improvements to his game. But if Bresee is the entrenched starter the pick could be a major fail because we spent resources on a solution we are unwilling to implement, because it would amount to admitting Bresee has been a flawed pick. In my view Bresee embodies a lot of the concerns about Shedeur Sanders in a sense, in that he definitely has a set of skills, but there is no indication that has any interest in improving certain other aspects of his game, namely playing run defense.

iceshack149

@grok please translate this.