strato

I know..sarcasm...but we might have to go into the season with that group..

CheramieIII

The addition of Brown and Wilkerson are definite upgrades for the D-line this year. We were 21st against the run and 13th in sacks last season, so these additions can only send those rankings higher. Woods will be starting by year end and Pressley will be placed into the rotation at the DT position opposite Sellis.

I didn't really like the draft at first but we stole Brown and Graham, Tennant was the best center in the draft, Woods is the wide body we needed and a great value pick, Canfield may be the heir apparent if Daniels doesn't work (my money is still on Daniels. He reminds me of Drew). I still have problems with the Robinson pick. I know they picked him for the system but the quickest feet in the draft can't move if your not cerebral at the same time.

Golf and sex are about the only things you can enjoy without being good at them.
Jimmy Demaret

Danno

I don't think brains were his problem, consistency was his problem.

CheramieIII

and that too, thanks Danno.

jeanpierre

Looking forward to seeing how the draftees and UDRFA look in the Black and Gold...

jeanpierre

New Orleans Saints used technology to draft their players

By James Varney, The Times-Picayune

May 08, 2010, 9:24AM

In the NFL draft last month, New Orleans Saints General Manager Mickey Loomis commanded not one but two sprawling systems in the team's draft room, a position that earned him a new nickname: Captain Kirk.

For the first time, the Saints were employing a new technology they have developed, along with a Microsoft spinoff company. The software, called "Surface," allowed the Saints to compress reams of information and video on hundreds of players, creating a kind cyberspace trading card with dozens of backs that can be displayed with a mouse click or screen touch.

Thus, on large wall screens and smaller personal computers, every Saints executive, coach or scout in the room could follow the action in the draft as a whole, and in real time study the team's own rankings at every position, and a list of the best available players according to the Saints' grades.

Watching Loomis as the admiral on this deck, which just a year ago had involved magnets, tape and stacks and stacks of paperwork, the software men dubbed him the commander of the Starship Enterprise.

But Loomis kept the magnets up, too. While he controlled the draft day operation from a post that looks like a coffee-table sized iPhone, he conceded he had some trepidation. It worked like a dream.

"Even the older-school guys get it," Loomis enthused. "Now we've got a way to put it all together. It's always been available to us, but now we can associate it with players and numbers."

For example, the Saints get reams of data from an outfit called STATS. Some of this is the same kind of numbers that comprise Monday morning boxscores and are familiar to every football fan. But others, "burned defender," or, "stuff," are more arcane yet revealing statistics that in the past required labor-intensive time to collate.

Now, it's all there with a click -- the Saints' own research, video footage from games for players, and for the draft, footage from the NFL combine and various school's Pro Days.

"We're always looking for an edge," Loomis said. "Whether it's technology, the talent of your people, anything. I think we have talented evaluators, and part of my job is to find the best way to use that."

The road to what now appears the best way began in 2007 when John Pollard, who was doing some NFL marketing work for Microsoft, met Loomis and some other Saints executives.

"Surface" was a fledgling at the time, but when Pollard brought it up, he said the Saints' team instinctively grasped its potential.

"So I brought Mickey and some others over to Microsoft -- top secret now," Pollard said. "At the time, the applications we'd developed were rudimentary -- finger painting, checkers."

Those basic pleasures are still a part of "Surface." Bill Gates and Warren Buffett use it to play cards together. But Pollard made frequent trips to Metairie, and eventually he and some other partners formed a company called Identity Mine. But the venture capital and much of the intellectual impetus for Identity Mine came from Microsoft and some other heavy hitters, and they also have a stake should the product become popular in the league, according to Pollard.

Thus far that hasn't happened. In fact, Loomis would like to keep it that way and confessed he had some reluctance about even discussing it. But the NFL is hip to it now, although Pollard acknowledged not every team has expressed interest.

At the moment the package the Saints are using costs roughly $250,000 with a service and maintenance contract adding thousands more. Pollard said that is a cut rate given to the Saints because of their initial, enthusiastic support, and the fact feedback from the Saints was instrumental in developing some of the features.

"With the Saints, it was just serendipity," Pollard said, estimating the Saints had easy access to some 30 percent of the information they owned. "I hit it off with Mickey, and Sean Payton was the right coach because he grasped it all immediately. I like the Saints people personally, and as an organization they have a vision."

The Saints have 32 terabytes of video on file. That is to "Surface" as some old-school mainframe is to a laptop. Payton, for instance, can break down video in a fraction of the time, scouts can compare Pro Days coast to coast, and players, quite soon, will have game video reviewable on their phone at home.

Ultimately, that's the beauty of "Surface". It promises not a new batch of information that must be absorbed and learned, but an easy and increasingly familiar way to access all the information already on hand. Loomis said younger staffers have taken to the system like otters to water.

"What we've been using the last 10 years I would equate to the CD collection you might have had then," Loomis said.

New Orleans Saints used technology to draft their players | - NOLA.com

It's not that my way is the right way, I just make the right way my way...