An Interesting Scenario on Draft Day

There you are, sitting on your couch watching the NFL Draft on Saturday, April 26th when Roger Goodell announces that a trade has been made for the 8th overall pick… Your immediate reaction is “Could this possibly happen again to the Saints?” Remember that Denver traded up right in front of the Saints in 2004 and drafted LB D.J. Williams with the 17th overall pick. That move forced the Saints to go in a different direction and simply draft the best available player, which at the time was DE Will Smith. Thankfully, that move has worked our for the Saints. Rumor has it that we were all set to take D.J. Willams until Denver snatched him. …Back to the present. You are thinking that another team has traded up in order to steal one of the players that the Saints are interested in because the Saints have the 10th pick…

…But not this time. This time, the Saints have reached a trade agreement with the Baltimore Ravens to flip-flop 1st round picks and send a 4th round pick in 2009 to the Ravens. This scenario is realistic for many reasons. The Ravens would be more than willing to make the deal for two reasons. First, the Ravens plan on drafting a QB with their first round pick. They can’t possibly continue to rely on 35-year old Steve McNair, and although they drafted Heisman trophy winner Troy Smith in last year’s draft, they don’t have much invested in him, given that he was a fifth-round pick. Secondly, the Ravens know the Cincinnati Bengals will not draft a QB with their first pick because they already have their franchise QB in Carson Palmer. Therefore, the Ravens would not have to worry about the Bengals grabbing their QB of choice with the #9 overall pick. On top of that, the Ravens and Bengals are division rivals that play twice each year. The Ravens would make the trade in order to throw a wrench in the Bengals’ draft day plans, gladly allowing the Saints to move ahead and snag the player that the Bengals were targeting. From the Ravens point of view, the benefits far outweigh the cost.

Therefore, with the 8th selection in the 2008 NFL Draft, the New Orleans Saints will draft either Glenn Dorsey from LSU or Sedrick Ellis from USC, whichever one is still sitting there. I can’t guarantee that either one will be there, but it seems as if the “mock draft gurus” who follow this type of stuff believe one of the two DT’s will be sitting there at the 8th overall selection. If you Google “2008 NFL Mock Draft,” the first 4 mock drafts all have either Glenn Dorsey from LSU or Cedric Ellis from USC falling to at least the 9th overall spot.

http://walterfootball.com/draft2008.php
http://www.nfldraftcountdown.com/sub/mockdraft.html http://www.draftking.com/nfl/2008/mockdraft.shtml
http://www.thefootballexpert.com/abromowitzmockdraft.html

The next question you are asking is why trade up when there is a possibility that one of those two DT’s will fall to us at selection 10. Forget it; they won’t. There is no doubt in my mind that the Bengals are interested in drafting one of these two DT’s because of their failure to land either Shaun Rogers or Dewayne Robertson, both of whom were free agent DT’s that the Bengals pursued.

With that question answered, you may still be wondering why the Saints shouldn’t just draft a CB with their first round pick. To be honest, I wouldn’t totally be against drafting a CB with our first pick, but the pool of CB’s is so deep this year that it’s likely there will be talent available at that position when we pick again in round two. Guys like Brandon Flowers (Virginia Tech,) Antoine Cason (Arizona,) Tracy Porter (Indiana,) Reggie Smith (Oklahoma,) Terrell Thomas (USC,) and Patrick Lee (Auburn) could all add an instant upgrade to our Swiss cheese secondary. Although many Saints fans still believe we should draft a CB in round one, it’s difficult to envision the Saints doing so after recently investing big free agent dollars in Jason David and Randall Gay, a 3rd round pick on Usama Young last year, and already having Mike McKenzie under contract.

Admittedly, this may not be the most obvious choice of possible scenarios for the Saints in the upcoming draft, but at the same time, this scenario of drafting a DT in the 1st round and a CB in the 2nd round immediately fills two of our needs on defense and instantly gives us a starter at DT and hopefully a future starter at CB who will likely contribute to the secondary this year in nickel and dime packages. At the very least, drafting a DT gives us one of the best front 4 (and possibly front 7, with the addition of Jonathan Vilma and Dan Morgan) in the NFL.
So if you are a believer that games are decided in the trenches, you should hope that on April 26th, Roger Goodell announces that Baltimore has agreed to trade the #8 overall pick – if that happens, you’ll know what it means.