With the Super Bowl now complete, the draft order is set. You can see the official first round draft order listed below. The first round is scheduled to take place on Friday night, April 28th. On Saturday April 29th, the second and third rounds will get finalized, and the draft will be complete that Sunday April 30th with the remaining rounds. The Saints currently have 5 picks in the draft which I’ve also listed below.
Here is the order for the 1st round:
1. Carolina Panthers
2. Denver Broncos
3. Buffalo Bills
4. Cincinnati Bengals
5. Arizona Cardinals
6. Cleveland Browns
7. San Francisco 49ers
8. Tennessee Titans
9. Dallas Cowboys
10. Washington Redskins
11. Houston Texans
12. Minnesota Vikings
13. Detroit Lions
14. St. Louis Rams
15. Miami Dolphins
16. Jacksonville Jaguars
17. New England Patriots (from Oakland Raiders)
18. San Diego Chargers
19. New York Giants
20. Tampa Bay Buccaneers
21. Kansas City Chiefs
22. Indianapolis Colts
23. Philadelphia Eagles
24. New Orleans Saints
25. Seattle Seahawks
26. Baltimore Ravens
27. Atlanta Falcons
28. New England Patriots
29. Chicago Bears
30. New York Jets
31. Pittsburgh Steelers
32. Green Bay Packers
The Saints will thus picked 24th in the 1st round. They also have the following picks:
2nd round, 24th pick
3rd round, 8th pick (from Redskins for Jammal Brown)
3rd round, 24th pick
7th round, 23rd pick
So the Saints currently have only 5 picks in the draft, though their first 4 are all in the first 88 choices. What happened to their other picks? Well, they lost their 4th round by trading up last year to select center Matt Tennant. Their 5th round pick was part of the Jammal Brown trade to the Redskins, but they got a better pick out of it. The 6th round pick was an escalated pick based on the playing time that David Thomas got with the team, and that was sent to New England.
The Saints move so much every year in the draft, especially in the Loomis/Payton era, I have no doubts that they could easily trade one of their third rounders and move down for extra picks or they could trade 2012 picks for extra picks in 2011. The Saints ended up with 6 picks last year, just 4 the year before, and 6 the year before that, though… so 5 picks is about on par with what they’re used to getting. I just feel like waiting between the 24th pick in the 3rd round all the way to the 23rd pick in the 7th round seems unlikely because that’s a lot of sitting around. I’m sure the Saints will find a player they like somewhere in the middle of the draft and trade to get an extra pick. We’ll see how it unfolds.
In the coming months I’ll be working with fellow St. Paul’s School alumnist Kris Bauner of Saturday Night Slant, who runs the top LSU blog out there. He’s a college football expert and will be able to give incredibly valuable insight on a number of players in the draft. While he specializes in the SEC he has extensive knowledge of college football in general, and we’ll put our minds together to give you the best NFL draft coverage possible right here on Saints Nation. Particularly, we’ll be looking at the prospects out there that might be good fits for what the Saints need, and we’ll also be looking at potential landing spots for the top LSU players. Be sure to check out Kris’ blog, Saturday Night Slant, for the most informative LSU news source out there.
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