Zack Baun: Top Graded LB / DPOTW [Why Baun Isn’t Still a Saint Thread]

livefromDC said

Yes, that's Coach Payton's words from when he was drafted. No argument there. I won't deny a direct quote. Perhaps if Payton remained the Saints coach, we would have seen that vision play out.

Coach Allen clearly didn't agree after several years of having direct access to Baun. Allen gets bashed unfairly for many things around here. This isn't one of those occasions. That quote is from May of this year. After having Baun in house for years, Allen said, "nah, that guy is a special teamer, OLBer and sometime pash rusher". The Eagles immediately said the same things Payton was saying when he drafted Baun.

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Yeah, so I think the quotes I gave a couple pages back give a possible sequence of events in line with these quotes/articles, too. My interpretation is a little more positive towards Allen, in that he took an athlete not getting on the field enough as a stack LB and got him into another position. Then his comments related to how they were now using him, while a bit of coach speak avoided the fact he hadn't at that point turned into a stack player that could get on the field.

But I am comfortable we are both able to apply some interpretation to this and neither able to be 100% conclusive. I do think that the SP quote clearly refutes the notion that there was never a consideration of Baun for MLB. Moreover it sounds like that was all part of the plan from the outset.