The New Orleans Saints, under the leadership and vision of Sean Payton and Mickey Loomis, selected a total of six rookies in this year’s draft, with 5 of those 6 being defensive players. Let’s take a look now at the Saints’ current roster in the area of the defensive line, where they not only had some consistency issues last season in terms of having trouble stopping the run and getting after the quarterback, but they also happened to have drafted two new players to compete there and hopefully address those very issues.
This Saints team appeared to me to have only been half-staffed with starter quality players on the defensive line in 2010. Sedrick Ellis was the starter at DT and Will Smith has been the perennial starter at right DE for the past several years now. The rest of the roster last year along the defensive line (Remi Ayodele, Alex Brown, Anthony Hargrove, Jimmy Wilkerson, Jeff Charleston and Junior Galette) were all good rotational and back-up players, but none really stood out as a true starter or an every down player at all.