As the college football season winds down and the NFL season nears the end of the regular season, talk of the NFL draft will only ramp up. In a recent article naming who each team should take if they were to hypothetically land the first overall selection, Curt Popejoy of Draft Wire gave the Saints an unusual selection: defensive lineman Jer’Zhan Newton out of Illinois.
Popejoy writes that “Either side of the line of scrimmage makes sense here and we love Newton’s pass-rush ability.”
Newton is a talented interior defender, but I’m not sure if the Saints can afford to spend back-to-back first round picks on that spot and that belief is only intensified if any player were to be available to them. If the Saints were able to walk away with Newton in the draft, though, it wouldn’t be an awful selection. It just doesn’t address their biggest need.
The biggest question mark here, is the idea that the Saints would not be taking a quarterback with the first overall selection. Some fans may not like it, but there is a high likelihood that the team won’t move on from Derek Carr this offseason. If a top player at the position were to fall to them, though, it would be hard to avoid them. Hitting on a low-cost rookie quarterback dramatically changes any team’s fortunes. If the Saints had their choice of Carr or Caleb Williams, Drake Maye, and Jayden Daniels, it’s really tough to see them staying the course.
