Monday, April 28, 2008

It's the greatest draft in Saints history!

How do we know? Because the instant media reception is decidedly "ho-hum". The Saints' draft gets a "B-" from USA Today and a "C+" from Mel Kiper Grades like this are sportswriters' way of telling you they have no fucking clue what to think while still appearing to give an informed opinion.

SI's intolerable Paul Zimmerman pretends to have given up on "grading" each team's draft right before he proceeds to do just that without actually typing letter grades. He would have done better to say nothing at all as far as the Saints were concerned because what he does write makes no sense. For instance, "Glenn Dorsey, the terrific DT from LSU, was their man. They even traded three places up, to seven, for a shot at him. Sorry, the Chiefs got there first," is wrong since the Saints didn't trade up to 7 until after Dorsey was off the board. And "Suspecting that their corners were perhaps slowing down a bit, the Saints grabbed CB Tracy Porter (4.37) with the next selection," could just as well have read, "I feel obligated to write a sentence about Tracy Porter."

The truth is there's no meaningful way to evaluate a draft. Some of these new Saints will be players. Some of them might even be good. Doubtless some of them will be laughably crappy. We'll be sure to keep an extra eye out for them.

Just as fun will be keeping an eye on the players the Saints could have chosen but didn't such as Tulane running back Matt Forte, who was available when the Saints took Porter, or Leodis Mckelvin, the highest rated defensive back who was still available at pick 10 where the Saints were originally slotted.

Meanwhile, there's not much we can say that's too different from what you'll find at the end of the AG wrap-up:
This year’s NFL Draft was certainly fun to watch, but we’ll have to wait until at least the end of the ’08 season before giving it any kind of grade. It definitely gets us primed for the preseason, though, and I can’t wait until August, when we can watch this team start to come together.


In other words... yeah, we'll get back to you when we actually see them play.

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