Here's What Will Happen Saturday
 

I dunno really. I have a ton of opinions though just like many here. Having the number two overall is very critical to a franchise's future. The greatest feeling I have about it though is anticipation and confidence. My skepticism grew very strong in the past two to three years seeing the type of personnel decisions made in the Haslett era. I do not have a greatly elevated opinion of Loomis yet. The distinct change of approach and the moves made thusfar lead me to believe he makes moves strongly in accord with the head coach's philosophy and desire though. Thus as the Tebuckys were Haslett's team maybe the Brees and draft picks forward will be the Payton era. So great hope for better moves.

As to the specifics of the upcoming draft-
~I am a bigtime Hawk advocate. I believe he is not only the real deal sort of tackling machine. I believe of the first 5 or 6 draft picks he is also the safest bet. That is, the one with least bust potential. Maybe not the highest impact but the surest. Saying all that, I also believe unless the team trades down lower than #4 he will not be the pick. Maybe I will be impressed by the FO all the more that their smokescreen was so effective and they take him anyway.
~I feel very good that a trade out of the number two spot will happen. If they do not, it still will be a high impact player. To pick up an extra pick or two and be able to sign one of the guys you want for lower money though would display wisdom and strategy that has not been seen here in some time though.
~My slate is still very clean for the new regime here. I am prepared to be supportive even if they do not make the draft choices I find most favorable. The two biggest would be taking Leinart or Mario at the #2 spot. If that happens I will only hope their shrewdness ends up proving them to be the professionals and us only wanna be GM fans. It is easy to imagine scenarios where those two picks could end up being the wisest moves no matter how much I want Hawk. Show us whatcha got Malcolm! Ya got the most devoted fans in the league here.

Nuff said. I don't care what anyone says, Hawk is gold, hell platinum. IMO, this dude is a MUST.

Simmons, Fujita, Bockwoldt--pretty solid linebacking crew. No need for a rookie at the position.

Pass rushers are always more valuable than 2nd string linebackers.

Healthy, competent quarterbacks are always more valuable than a redundant 2nd unit pass rusher.

Exactly why we already have two good pass rushers, and there's none worthy of top 5 in the draft, unless you want a guy who has ZERO impact in big games. That's your kinda guy? Hope not. Hawk it is.

You guys have got to let the hate go for The Immortal Mario Williams. I have no hate for this Hawk person, (who couldn't stop Vince Young at home by the way--big time players and big time games you know). But without question, LB is the most improved position this offseason. We just don't need another OLB. I'm guessing that we'd have to put Hawk at WLB and I don't see the need for that.

We could have the chance to draft the next Deacon Jones or Reggie White. At the very worst, we'd be getting the next Howie Long or Lee Roy Selmon. The guy is a game changer. Offenses would have to run at the other side because they'd get nowhere against The Immortal Mario Williams. I'm not sure that sacks in big games are the best indicator of his career. Defensive playcalling may have been more conservative against premiere opponents?

I cite Mike Detillier. http://www.houmatoday.com/apps/pbcs..../1032/SPORTS01
If we stay at #2, we must take The Immortal Mario Williams. If we can drop a few picks we can take a project player like Hawk.

Your love for this dude is laughable. Sure, dismiss the fact he got toally blanked in big games. And against UT, Hawk was a defensive STAR, so not only do we get delusions of Mario being a Reggie White, we get misinformation about Hawk? The best defense for Mario is to make stuff up that's flat out untrue about Hawk? Yikes. That's a slippery slope to tread. Hawk was all over Vince Young. Aj Hawk against Texas:

This was against the national champs. Find me ONE big game from Mario against ONE good team. You won't, I looked. I am shocked to see that anyone would take a player with such a HUGE red flag at a position not needed. Very surprising.

How's that coolade taste? Williams is a death wish draft choice for a team that has no need for another DE. Lienart or Hawk are the only viable choices in this year's draft for the Saints.

Didn't they serve Kool-aid with that one cult that killed everyone? :wink: May taste good, but it may also kill ya in the end. No Mario. If we had to choose between him and Leinart, i'd choose Leinart too.

Leinart has a dead arm. Hawk's a good player but not good enough for 2nd overall and not a position of need.

The Immortal Mario Williams is the only hope this franchise has of sniffing the superbowl in the next 10 years. The Grant trade allows us to get another quality player now. It's a no brainer.

It's simple. If you have the chance to draft the next Deacon Jones or Reggie White, you simply have to take them. Taking the next Cie Grant 2nd overall just isn't reasonable.
http://www.lotsofco.org/archives/koolaid.jpg

So, what's reasonable, is taking a guy with no talent for big games, at a position we don't need. THAT'S reasonable? And calling Hawk Cie Grant just showed me there's no way you are thinking rationally at this point. You would take Cie Grant 5 overall with a trade of Charles Grant? When things get this irrational, it's time for me to bow out. Enjoy that kool-aid, hope it doesn't choke you when some team is lamenting the fact they got saddled with the next Alonzo Spellman at a much higher salary.

He's got to be pulling our leg. I know schizophrenics who wouldn't suggest that Williams is a player. He's just messing with us.

The only thing for sure in this year's draft will be the beer lined up on my table. Either way the draft goes, I'm ready! I will say this could be the first year we could see the Saint's fan in the room at the time of our pick actually cheer for once. How many times in the past have you heard boos at the instance of our pick? I say, bring it on! Bottoms up!

:shock: Dude, What game were you watching? Hawk was all over Vince Young in that game like an Ethiopian on some Popeye's chicken. And... that was against one of the NCAA's better offensive lines (not to mention the 2006 NCAA National Champs). He also had big games against all of the other ranked opponents Ohio State faced this year. What big game did "Super Mario" have against a team in the upper echelon of college football? It kills me that people go over the edge with the value of defensive linemen. Just for kicks, do you know where the highest ratio of 1st round draft busts come from? You guessed it...defensive linemen. :?

BMG, All I wanna know is, how you can call the safest pick in the draft a project player?

I don't know why everyone thinks they are professional scouts and analysts for the NFL but not every player in the draft is over rated. It seems that at one time or another this off-season, someone has claimed that every player in to be picked in the top ten is over-rated. IMO, these guys are rated and ranked as high as they are for a reason. Hawk and Mario are the two top rated defensive players in the draft because they have the talent and tools to be solid NFL players. Yes, they may not be Hall-of-famers, but damnit, at least see what they can do in the pros before saying they were over rated. Nearly all top ten picks are over-rated. Not every pick can be a pro-bowl/HOF player. Alot of these guys just want to be the ones saying "I told you so" as soon as the player has a bad game because they wanted another player drafted. We all think we could draft, coach, and play better than the teams we watch, but realisticly, NO WE CANT. My point is, let the coaches, scouts, and GMs do their jobs, and 2-3 years from now, if the pick they made doesn't work out, then call it a bust, but don't make any early assumptions. Remember Tom Brady was a 6th round pick and he is one of the top three QBs in the league. No one was calling him over rated coming out of michigan. Someone on the Pats thought he could help their team, and they were right. How many people saw that one coming.

Um, I saw the Sullivan disaster as soon as we picked him, didn't you? Guess what else? The draft is Saturday, and some of us like to talk about it and the players. If you don't like to read someone evaluating a player, you should probably avoid the threads that have anything to do with the draft. Furthermore, as much time as a lot of us spend looking at these picks, and as much interest as this draft is generating for us, we can mkae whatever judgments we choose. Scouts, experts WHOMEVER CAN BE WRONG, no matter how much they get paid to make these decisions. Ever heard of Ryan Leaf, Tim Couch, Akili Smith, Tony Mandarich? Bosworth, Mamula, etc. Just cause they get paid to do it, doesn't make their opinion any more written in stone than any of us on here. But if you wanna believe other fallible humans such as ourselves who get paid to do the job a lot of us would love to do can't be wrong, so be it. But if you don't wanna read it, don't.

So you agree with what I said about most top picks not being as great as everyone thought they would be. Look, my point isn't to say that I don't like seeing players evaluated, I just dont like people saying that every player that is supposed to be picked in the top ten are over-rated. I may have worded what I was trying to say wrong yesterday, but alot of people are claiming this guy and that guy are over-rated and no one ever has a reason why. What are these guys seeing that the scouts aren't.NOTHING. Most of these guys are talking blindly and its obvious. If you have done your own research and have made your own assumption, thats one thing, but these guys who have nothing to back up their statements, these are the ones who bother me.

I can agree with that. I know for me personally, if I am gonna speak against a player, it's gonna be with evidence, not just throwing out random "he sucks." And a lot of that goes on. But there are enough guys on here who I KNOW do their research on players before throwing out impressions that I think it outweighs the guys who don't. And for the most part, we know who they are. I think what you may see a lof of times is a guy will give his impression on a player in one thread, and then in all subsequent threads, instead of going into detail again, he may just make comments. So if you didn't read his inital thread, you may think a person is throwing out generalizations without back-up. Everyone has their reason for looking at a player one way or another, just believe me, a LOT of guys on this forum do their heavy lifting before evaluating a player. Again some don't as well, you just gotta know who to sift through. :cheers:

I don't think that whodi said "most draft picks not being as great as everyone thought they'd be." He pointed out that sometimes overly positive momentum can get behind a player and elevate him above his reality, some get severely injured, and sometimes players just implode for no fathomable reason. This is a very unusual draft in that there are 20 extremely high quality 1st round candidates, any one of whom would be an outstanding addition to their team. Looking back on previous drafts and the amount of hype preceeding them, there was about the right amount of overall enthusiasm given the talent at the time. The few players whodi mentioned are a tiny percentage of first round draft picks and are examples of highly paid scouts being wrong on occasion, like any of us here.