Don’t expect the Saints to draft a character red flag, ever

Lots of chatter recently I’ve seen online (and on twitter) center around the question of whether or not the Saints would take guys like LB Randy Gregory, CB Marcus Peters and WR Dorial Green-Beckham. If you’ve never heard of these players, they’re all three considered some of the best prospects at their position but their stock in the draft has dropped due to off the field concerns. Gregory failed a drug test at the combine and has a prior history of marijuana use, Green-Beckham has had similar issues that resulted in him being dismissed from Missouri, and Peters was kicked off of Washington due to attitude concerns. And so there’s the age old question: do you sacrifice talent and draft a player with less potential because he’s got a better head on his shoulders or do you draft a guy based on his talent and hope your locker room culture can change him? If you ask the Saints how they feel about it, looking at draft history makes it clear. The team will not draft a player with red flags, especially early.

Let’s consider the players Sean Payton has taken in the first two rounds since 2006:

Both sad and interesting to note that the Saints have only had four 2nd round draft picks since 2006 and 5 times where they’ve had no selection in that round. Thanks, Rog. But anyway, when you look at this list, do you view any of these guys as red flags?

Reggie Bush certainly had a media circus that surrounded him and some immaturity issues, but he was generally viewed as a good character guy with no red flag off the field issues. There were some payment rumors circulating around him but that’s about as bad as it got. Say what you will about Roman Harper and Malcolm Jenkins, those two guys are some of the highest character players in the Sean Payton era. Same goes for Meachem. If you look up and down this list there’s really not one player you can describe as a character risk coming in. Read all their draft profiles if you want, the only one that has anything to say about character is Cam Jordan and it says “Has one documented off-the-field issue to our knowledge” without specifying anything. And needless to say, to my knowledge, Jordan has been a model citizen since joining the Saints.

That’s data for 13 straight players where there wasn’t a red flag to speak of off the field. Now that we know what we know about these players and their professional career, you could argue that perhaps Bush, Ellis, Brown and Vaccaro have had less than ideal temperaments at times but by no means have any of these guys been anywhere close to a serious problem. By and large all of these guys have been huge locker room successes, even the ones that struggled at times with their play like Jenkins, Harper, Meachem and Robinson.

To me, that speaks pretty clearly that the Saints won’t draft a guy with a character red flag in the first or second round. Since 2006 they’ve passed on a lot of supremely talented players because of the character risk. That’s not to say the team won’t take guys with a checkered past. Khiry Robinson and Chris Ivory both came in with rough backgrounds, but both were also undrafted rookies in investment. In fact, a quick glance at the Saints entire draft history since 2006 (but not as much extensive research to back up this view point) suggests that the Saints don’t draft a red flag character guy, period. And that’s with really no exceptions. Feel free to disagree in the comments below.

So don’t get your hopes up on the Saints selecting any of the guys I listed in the first paragraph, or anyone like them.