TheDeuce

As I think about the upcoming draft, I keep remembering what one poster here said: "We can't really mess this draft up, can we?" Here are my opinions:

Not likely. The only way I see to mess up this draft is by taking Vince Young. He's a wild card, an unproven raw talent that will be determined how good he is in a few years, once he has been given the chance to progress. However, with the history of the busts that the Saints have drafted in whom we have expected lots of improvement and progression but never seem to come around, I don't really see why anybody should think that drafting a raw talent like Vince Young would turn out any differently? The guy can run, but he doesn't have world class speed. He can throw, but his arm is weaker than Leinart's and his accuracy is much worse. By drafting him, we would be saying, "I hope that our coaches can work with him in order to refine his mechanics and turn him into a top 10 QB." I just can't see that happening. Knowing the Saints, and just being a realist, it seems like I've seen that so many times before.

With Matt Leinart, who I personally believe we should take, I think you know what you're going to get. A real intelligent guy who has ridiculous accuracy and an average-good arm. The guy can make all of the reads, and hates to lose. But the thing I love about him is his ability to win. Plain and simple, he's a winner. He might not turn out to be the second-coming of Peyton Manning, but I can guarantee you'll never see Leinart on the sidelines laughing it up, dancing, and smacking his own ass right after he threw a game-blowing interception. I see him as a low risk/ medium-to-very high reward player. He'll obviously be an upgrade over AB, and I think he'll bring a winning mentality to this team that we have lacked for a long time. In comparison to VY, Leinart has pretty much put everything in his arsenal out on the table. We've seen him win 34 straight games, make nice deep touch passes, zip the ball into tight areas when he has too, and form to the typical pocket passer. However, with Vince Young, there is so much still left to be determined. We know the guy can run, but we don't know how effective his running game will be against NFL-defenses in which DLinemen are running 4.6s and better. We know he had a good passer efficiency rating, but will he be able to have such wide open receivers in the NFL as he did in college if he's not running the option to bring defenders up? Will he be able to show the intelligence needed to learn our playbook (unlike AMAC) in one offseason, or the intelligence to read NFL defenses? Will his mechanics prvent him from adding a good passing dimension to his running game, a la Michael Vick? I'm not really sure to any of these questions. But my stance is, our team is so far in a hole right now, that we can't afford to draft a guy with "all of the talent in the world" but never seems to pan out (kind of like AB, but using a 1st round pick on him). I think with Leinart, the guy is NFL-ready, and understands the pro-style offense. There's not a lot left to discover about Leinart except maybe how strong his arm really is, and other stats like that. In my opinion, we should take Leinart, but I'm sure most of you already know that.

Trading down is also another possibility that plenty of posters on this site support. For the most part, I would be very happy with a trade down (under the right circumstances). First of all, I think if we trade down, it should be for AJ Hawk, and nobody else. The guy is a playmaker at the LB position, something we haven't had in a long time. I think with getting Hawk, we need to get at least two extra picks. In my mind, drafting a QB like Omar Jacobs who should have stayed another year and is ten times as risky as VY is just plain dumb. If we are going to get these extra picks, then use them for defense, because you can still get REALLY good defensive players in the 2nd round (especially LBs), which doesn't always seem to be the case for offensive players. I believe that guys like Kyle Williams, Laron Landry, D'Qwell Jackson, Abdul Hodge, maybe Bobby Carpenter or Thomas Howard, Cromartie, and maybe even Broderick Bunkley will still be available (especially early in the 2nd round with our 34th pick). Building up a defense is very important, because as the cliche says, and is probably correct about, defenses win championships. But this doesn't mean we should forget about the offense. Getting a smart fundamental QB who doesn't turn the ball over can not only improve our offense, but could drastically help our defense by giving them more time to rest, better average starting field position, and less drives where a stop is ABSOLUTELY required.

Overall, I think taking Leinart, or trading down for Hawk and then a few extra picks for the defense would make this draft a huge success.

In my opinion, and this is just my opinion, taking VY or Omar Jacobs (or some other second-rate QB) would be a disaster. It would be an immediate disaster in the case of taking Jacobs, because then we would still be left without a starting QB besides AB, and perhaps a long-term debacle if VY never reached his potential.

Take Leinart, the safer bet, or trade down for Hawk. Thank you for your time. Any constructive criticism would be appreciated.