Loomis speaks about draft tommorrow

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“No, I wouldn’t say rebuild is the right word,” the New Orleans Saints general manager said.

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There’s pressure from multiple angles. But the only pressure Loomis says he’s feeling comes from the responsibility of having so many picks in the early rounds.

“What makes it critical is we have five picks within the first three rounds,” Loomis said. “You want to be successful with that. You need to be successful and pick good players.”

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Loomis wouldn’t get into specifics, but he said there are some players in this class who are not on their board at all. Each one, however, is treated as a unique situation and deserves specific consideration.

“It’s hard to say there’s a policy. Every one of these cases is different,” Loomis said. “You have to look at each one individually and judgment on what you’ll handle and deal with and what you won’t. It’s hard for me to make a blanket statement that we’ll do one thing or the other.”

Between gathering information on those players, New Orleans has been putting the finishing touches on its draft plans. This means making any last-minute grade changes or rankings, running through various mock drafts to prepare for different scenarios, and assessing the trade value of each pick.

For the final task, Loomis said he’s evaluated every trade made during the last 10 drafts and consulted the trade-value chart to determine what he’d be comfortable giving up to move up in the draft or receiving as compensation to move down. By making those judgments now, he can avoid making such decisions when the clock is ticking and adrenaline is pumping.

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“I get a pretty good sense of the history of moving in these rounds,” Loomis said. “I have a pretty good idea. I’ll look every pick, if we move one pick up, two picks, three picks up and the same thing going backwards. I’ll have a real good idea of what has happened, of what the perceived value is based on the point charts, and then we’ve got to make a determination of, ‘Hey this is what we would do, and this is what we’d take if we move back.’”

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“I think it’s unrealistic to expect rookie players to come in and turn your team around,” he said. “I think we always have unrealistic expectations of first-year players. It takes these guys times to acclimate to the NFL so we shouldn’t judge them this season. We should judge them on what happens in their career over or over the next two or three years.”

Still, they’ll have to contribute in some regard if this retooling is to work out. Last year wasn’t good enough. The goal is to get better. The right rookies will help.

“Obviously 7-9 we don’t feel like that was good enough, obviously none of our fans feel like that’s good enough, but we’re looking to improve off that,” Loomis said.

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