It’s too soon to guess who the New Orleans Saints might pick in the 2024 NFL draft, but that doesn’t mean we can’t work on our watch list. The 2023 college football season will be here before we know it. The Saints’ scouts will be busy evaluating the next crop of college talent, so it doesn’t hurt for us to do some early scouting either.
To that end, 2024 mock drafts have some usefulness in highlighting which players we should be looking out for. Draft Wire’s Curt Popejoy has the Saints picking Washington Huskies defensive end Bralen Trice, whose name has come up before in other 2024 projections. But what’s so appealing about him?
For one thing, Trice has the rare combination of size and speed that the Saints value at defensive end. The junior is listed at 6-foot-4 and 274 pounds this season. For another, he’s coming off off a breakout season in which he led the Huskies with 9 sacks and won the coaches’ pick as defensive player of the week five times. The Saints have a type at this position (Isaiah Foskey is listed at 6-foot-5 and 265 pounds, Payton Turner at 6-foot-6 and 270) and Trice fits the bill.
And defensive end could very well be a position of need for the Saints in the spring. They’re working on a contract extension to help Cameron Jordan close out his career in black and gold, but Carl Granderson will be a free agent next year. Turner hasn’t met expectations to this point in his career. Foskey is promising but he hasn’t done anything in the NFL yet. It shouldn’t shock anyone if Trice is on New Orleans’ radar.
