Dave Ziegler joining the Saints as an advisor for Free Agency and the draft (Saints permanently hire Ziegler as Personnel Advisor)
If we didn’t have picks it’s because we traded them to move up. You brag on McCoy, but then complain that we don’t have the 2nd round pick we traded to move up for him. You can’t have it both ways.
I don’t know if McCoy is a top 10 center. I remember him grading out as our best OL this year but it wasn’t great. There’s no way I’m believing Ruiz is a top 10 guard.
Amon Ra was drafted the same year as Olave. First team all-pro. Ceedee was drafted one year earlier. First team all-pro. Their teams didn’t trade up for those guys. That gave them those extra picks that allowed them to become contenders.
We’re really lucky we got those picks for Payton. We would’ve been so screwed with no 1 last year and no 2 this year.
No complaints from me about anything. I’m just pointing out the differences in each draft classes contributing to drafting an immediate all-pro selection. You’re complaining about not drafting an all-pro in 6 years to measure how great they are while the players who have AP talent just began their careers. Point was there’s a high chance to land immediate all-pro selected players when there’s a full deck of early round picks or more like 2017’s class.
Just because a player hasn’t been selected to an all-pro team within 2 years, or to begin their careers, doesn’t mean they won’t be all-pros, or that they aren’t among the best at their positions, or that they aren’t very successful picks. Some positions in the league are deeper than others of highly productive players which requires players to stand out in certain stat categories more to AP voters to put them in the top 5 votes for a selection.
Amon-Ra is a first team all-pro in year 3 with a 119 reception year. Ceedee Lamb made second team all-pro in year 3 with 107 recs and first team all-pro in year 4 with 135 recs. Lamb’s recs in year 3 jumped from 79 into the 100s. Amon-Ra got the AP voters’ attention in year 3 after a 106 rec season in year 2 once his team started winning more in his 3rd year.
Chris Olave has played just 2 seasons. His reception total has increased each season from 72 to 87. He appears to be in line for another reception jump like Amon-Ra and Lamb did in their 3rd years.
It took Michael Thomas 3 years before he was an all-pro when he had his first 120+ rec season in ‘18. Cam Jordan was selected in 7 years. Armstead in 6 years. There was a 7 year gap between Jimmy Graham’s first all-pro selection and Cam Jordan’s first all-pro selection.
There’s no time limit requirement for an elite player to be selected to an all-pro team to determine if they’re elite/all-pro caliber or if they were a great pick. Different factors goes into the AP voting process.