Girod Street End Zone

The Goat
GSEZ Founder

Assuming that everyone has recovered from Claude’s John Nash impersonation from earlier this week, we thought you might like to share some of our original thoughts about the draft.

They’re not all OUR original thoughts, mind you, but most of them in fact are, and of course we’ll credit those from whom we stol–, umm, by whom we were inspired.

And the one thought the rules them all is that the eight most important Saints after Drew Brees, in no particular order, are MLB Jonathan Vilma, CB Jabari Greer, CB Tracy Porter and whoever are the five OL standing between Brees and the other team’s defense.

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First, let’s address the situation involving LT Jammal Brown.   After a much younger backup (Jermon Bushrod) replaced the injured Brown for an entire championship season, there’s more than a ton of smoke over the idea that Brown may/must be traded, given the demographics of age (Brown’s already 29), his ability to command a much bigger salary, the fact that we already have yet another quality backup in Zach Streif, and everyone’s desire to play rotisserie football.

I would agree that Brown is not an “elite left tackle.”  And we grant you that in a perfect world, if someone offers us a high second-round pick and maybe a throw-in low rounder, trading him now is more than justifiable, and maybe even puts a toe into praiseworthy.

But let us consider one Claude-esque thought:  as we sit today, the two biggest threats in the NFC as Minnesota and Dallas.  We were down 24-3 at home to Dallas, primarily because DeMarcus Ware, rushing at Jermon Bushrod, spent the evening taking Drew Brees’s shoulder pads off.  A few weeks later, we beat the Vikings by three at home, with our lowest yardage total of the season, utilizing a max protect scheme to make sure Vikings RDE Jared Allen didn’t pull an encore of Ware.

These are the teams we have to beat to win another Super Bowl next year, and we have to stop their elite pass rushers coming right over our LT to do it.   Trading a 29-year-old Jammal Brown, who wants a big contract and would most likely be an unrestricted free agent next year if we don’t sign him, and keeping 25-year-old Jermon Bushrod, with his lower salary negotiation leverage and greater possibility to improve, is the right move on paper.   But right now, Brown is still the better player, and certainly more trustworthy alone against an elite pass rusher, and my best shot to win a Super Bowl again in 2010 is with the status quo ante at left tackle.

Yes, maybe we get nothing for Brown if/when he walks next year, or maybe he holds out  this season and we can’t get much for him in a training camp trade, I don’t know, maybe no other LTs get hurt between now and the season opener.  But I have watched the Eagles swap older for younger for 10 years now and all it’s gotten them is the title of 2000-2009 NFC Regular Season Champions.  Even Bill Belichick has been revamping his roster since 2004, and hasn’t won a Lombardi since, and the closest he came was when he traded to get veterans (Randy Moss and Wes Welker), not ditch them.  I’m against the grain here, but I’m not trading Brown.

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Having said all that, whether Brown is traded or not, and no matter how many Saints OL went were selected to the Pro Bowl last year, every year I’d always like to see us take a project OT or interior lineman in the middle rounds.  You just can never have too many good offensive linemen, and the best ones to get are the ones who have a year in your system and on your bench, growing into their mid-20s bodies and learning the pro game with your own coaches and players.

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Every year, we talk about needing defense, but the possibility of “succumbing to the temptation of Payton getting a new toy for his offense in the first round”, well, the national media just can’t help being trite.

Now, we have a counterweight:  the Witchh Doctor needs toys, too.  He doesn’t demand great toys, but they must be smart, disciplined, versatile, willing to do their job exactly even if it means somebody else gets the free shot at the QB, and willing to run for 60 minutes.

These qualities, thankfully, are reasonably consistent with the type of player the Saints in the Loomis era have tended to target in the upper rounds of late:  players who can manage their own egos (yes, even Reggie) from big schools who were productive, consistent performers.  No Haslett-reaches for guys who left you a little wanting in college, or who had the athleticism of Olympic decathetes and the football instincts of Nathan Lane.  (Yeah, I’m recycling that line; I just love it.)

Where this likely leaves us, picking 32nd at the end of the first round, is with a collection of guys who could play in our front seven, who came from established programs and gave a consistent effort for their college careers.  Versatility is a bonus, although admittedly if you’re a DT, there’s only so much versatility you can have.   Here are the four guys, to me, that fit our bill, at least one of which will be available at no. 32:

Sean Witherspoon, OLB, Missouri
Jerry Hughes, DE, TCU
Brian Price, DT, UCLA
Daryl Washington, OLB, TCU

I suspect we’d take them in that order.  I can’t see us taking DEs Carlos Dunlap of Florida or Everson Griffen of USC, guys who might take plays off or still be finding themselves.  You don’t need to be the greatest athlete to be successful in a Witchh Doctor defense, but you do need to be in the right place at the right time, with at least enough ability to make one guy account for you, and go like hell at all times, every time.

If we had anything resembling a “crying need”, it’s for just one guy who can be a consistent edge rusher that teams have to account for in pass protection, and of the top prospects with that skill, Jerry Hughes is the most likely to be around at no. 32.  He’d be my first choice tonight, mostly because I think he’s also athletic enough to play the run and drop into coverage some.  Unfortunately, pass rushers tend to creep up the board on draft day, and my strong suspicion is that he’s gone by then.

I don’t know why, but having read all I’ve read about the 10-15 guys at positions that Saints might target and have a shot at, I think we end up with Daryl Washington, and I’m fine with it.   As potential lagniappe, he may still be available after a minor trade down, if the trade-down opportunity is there and we’re in the mood to gamble.

Late in the second round, unless we take Price in the first, there’s a number of defensive tackles who (based on what I’ve read, mind you) sound like possibles:  Geno Atkins of Georgia, Lamarr Houston of Texas, Tyson Alualu of California, and D’Anthony Smith of La. Tech.   Any of these guys is fine with me.

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My genius idea to make the draft even livelier:  Every team can trade, once per draft year, its own 7th round pick for a 5-minute time out to extend its time on the clock on any round.  If you call time out, you extend your picking time by five minutes, and the team picking after you gets that 7th round pick.  But it has to be your own, and if you don’t have your 7th round pick, you can’t call time out.

Think about it:  nobody is going to give up a pick, even a 7th rounder, for no reason, if only not to look foolish.  On the other hand, whenever somebody calls time out, you just know some **** is going down.   Is there a trade?  Maybe an auction for the pick?  Is the team that called the time out upping the price by at least the trading partner’s 7th rounder?  My god, man, the suspense!  The fans are going to love it:  I have just made the NFL Draft even more dramatic.  Even if it’s maybe three hours or so longer.

And you thought only Claude’s complex algorithms were Nobel-worthy.

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Without getting into a lot of detail, I just don’t want us to trade up. 

The last three years, we’ve been trading up, or giving up draft picks to get expensive vets like Vilma and TE Jeremy Shockey.  God knows it all worked out…..but I am getting a little nervous about the pipeline behind the current talent.  Yes, we have a young core.  Yes, we have Stanley Arnoux and Chip Vaughn, the 2009 draftees lost for the year to camp injuries last summer, almost as two freebies.

Having said that, we have no real young talent anywhere in our front seven, unless you think DT Sedrick Ellis, admittedly a decent player, is making a big leap this year into playmaker status.  We need to take shots at loading up on young front seven talent in the hopes that a couple pan out.  If anything, if I could get a decently high third rounder for my trouble, I’d trade down a few spots, if more than a couple of my targets were still on the board at 32.  

Now, it seems like all the pundits have been crowing about how great it will be for the Rams, with the top pick in the second round, to be in a position to deal it because so many teams, with a full night and early morning to work with, will be wheeling and dealing to grab the great prospect that slid out of the first round for no apparent reason the previous night.

However, as my friend Chad Rubin deftly points out, at least one team is probably shrewd enough to figure out that the trade to make is not the first pick of the second round, it’s the last pick of the first round.  Somebody needs to have the onions to look around after the first 31 picks and say “Hey, Prospect X is still there.  If we let this go overnight, some other idiot is going to way overpay the Rams for the first pick in round 2 and grab him.  Let’s call the Saints and overpay a little less badly and get him now, before everybody else starts to stack up offers overnight.”  In short, I think this new draft format may have increased, even if ever so slightly, the value of the last pick in the first round.

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Final random thoughts: 

Real FBs are difficult to find, but after the way our running game lost its edge when Heath Evans got hurt in game six, I’d like to see at least one decent FB prospect either drafted late or targeted as a UDFA; we will need to revive that early-season running attack, and as helpful as TE David Thomas was as an H-back last year…..we need a real FB lying around on the practice squad just in case Evans gets hurt again.

Please, no TEs, or QBs (maybe next year), or safeties, or WRs.  And as far as another running back, I am content to wait to see what veterans might get released around training camp;  we have a third-down back already, and any thumper still available in the late rounds is probably slower than hell anyway.

On the positive side, you can never have enough OL or CBs (if the right CB falls to 32, just grab him and we’ll figure out the front seven later), and otherwise it’s front seven, baby.

Enjoy the draft, gang.  We haven’t forgotten about the release of the 2010 schedule, but it’s not going anywhere, and we’ll break it down for you in the next couple of weeks.

GO SAINTS GO!

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 22nd, 2010 at 12:54 am and is filed under The New Orleans Saints. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.