What to expect moving forward

Only those inside the building know what responsibility the personnel people deserve for some really bad draft picks in recent years. The personnel people presumably are evaluating and ranking players based on the physical traits desired by the coaches--for example, the Saints' preference for size over speed at defensive end. The idea is that they are evaluating players based on what the Saints do, not in some generic way like those in the media.

But the general manager (a) picked the top personnel people; (b) presided over the process used to rank and select players; (c) promoted a drafting philosophy built on targeting players in the draft to an unusual degree under the premise that the team could identify good prospects with an abnormally high level of confidence; and (d) had the ultimate responsibility for the picks made, especially in the higher rounds.

A problem in recent years is that the team has clearly been drafting for need in the early picks. In the past, the Saints tried to address needs in free agency so that they could have some freedom of action in the draft. But the consequence of our salary-cap abuses is that we can't keep some players we would like to keep and we can't sign some free agents we would like to sign. And if a team is drafting players based on need, then it often "forces" the picks it makes, and it needs those players to produce now, not later. We drafted Trevor Penning as a tackle. One can speculate we were eager to pick Penning because we needed badly a tackle. But in two years, he has done nothing but show that he lacks the physical traits to play tackle.