With the 9th Pick in the 2025 draft, who should the Saints select? (merged)

St. Geezy said
Definitely agree on that. The issue is that what happens is that the team won’t go out of its way to find a better player to trump a player whose salary is that high.

Now, if they happen to stumble upon a cheap free agent that suddenly has a light bulb come on and gets great, or get lucky and strike gold on an immediate Pro Bowl level rookie guard out of Bloomsberg College that you got in the middle of the draft, that’s a different story.

The most feasible move with Ruiz is to draft a guard in the 3rd round or so and have him develop behind Ruiz for a year. Next year we can get out of Ruiz's contract and have that guy take over.

We basically tried it with Salvaderi at LG but he can't stay healthy. I think it's why we brought in a lower tier guard like Patrick to compete with him. Hopefully they shore that position up with a decent FA this year.