re: Saints' beat writer Jeff Duncan thinks Saints will take DE Taco Charlton

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if they're both available, trade down a few spots to try to pick up a third and take whichever one is left.

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I was going to say something similar. There's no need to take Taco at 11, he'd probably be around at 18 or so too if you could trade back. Sean and Loomis are notorious for falling in love with prospects and reaching though.

I've analyzed the Saints draft needs and possible selections ad nauseum. At pick 11, I think the 5 targets are Thomas, Barnett, Foster, Hooker, and Allen. All 5 would fill a need and would not be a reach. It's possible that they are all gone and then you pray you can find a trade partner. If you move down to 17-20, you take Taco and then you trade up at 32 if needed to get Reddick/Cunningham. It's difficult to look past round 1 without knowing what the compensation for Butler will be. FS, DE, OLB, and ILB all need to be addressed.

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Kiper has Charlton ranked above Barnett.

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maybe so but I don't think that is a correct evaluation

I would take Barnett over Charlton all day long

hopefully the saints don't agree with duncan's thoughts on Charlton being ranked above Barnett

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QB DeShaun Watson, North Carolina

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Stopped reading here

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Meh, I trust Mayock more than just about anyone, and he doesn't have Taco in his top 5 (unless he recently updated).

Barnett is number 3 fwiw.

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Mayock's edge rusher ranking. It's obvious that Mayock, unlike many here, weights what happens in pads more heavily than what happens in shorts in Indianapolis, because these rankings are direct reflection of actual production

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Edge rusher

1. Myles Garrett, Texas A&M
2. Tim Williams, Alabama
3. Derek Barnett, Tennessee
4. Solomon Thomas, Stanford
5. Takkarist McKinley, UCLA

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The combine is important, and it serves as an environment to do a mass scouting at one time...but really what they're looking for is to verify that a players measurables match what they see on tape of them playing football. If a player matches what they expected to see, then their tape evaluations were on. If guy performs better or worse at the combine than he appears on tape, then they watch more tape. More often than not the combine carries little weight compared to on field production.

So Thomas is fast and strong and jumps high for a guy his size, okay, why wasn't he crushing quarterbacks in a pass happy league? That's what Mayock is asking. The measurables are nice, but a guy with his measurables should have better production. People get way too carried away with the combine numbers. These team are drafting ball players not exercisers. People see the combine and immediately forget everything they've seen for the last 4 years and decide that player X is now better than player Y because he ran faster or jumped higher, even though player Y is actually better at the game.

It's fascinating really, and I would assume due largely in part to recency bias and our relentless desire to compare guys in this class to previous classes based solely on measurables. This guy is 6'3" 247 and ran a 4.54, holy shite that's the same as Von Miller! This guy could be as good as Von Miller, I could see him going in the top 5!

Meanwhile that guy got 10 sacks in 3 years and Von Miller was an animal

That's not anyone in particular, just an example of what I'm talking about

Agree 100%

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Sean and Loomis are notorious for falling in love with prospects and reaching though.

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Fans get too caught up with the idea of "reaching" and thinking that you could have gotten a player a little later. If you like a prospect better than the other prospects available then you go and get him and you don't risk missing out on him. You just have to trust your scouting, which has sucked at times through the years, but that's a separate issue entirely.

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It's obvious that Mayock, unlike many here, weights what happens in pads more heavily than what happens in shorts in Indianapolis, because these rankings are direct reflection of actual production

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Charlton didn't particularly have a good Combine. Neither did Barnett, although he was sick. I think the concern with Barnett is that he's not a top flight athlete, so what worked for him in college may not work for him in the pros. The scouts say he has average feet. One scout said Barnett's feet are not "twitchy". So can he consistently beat NFL LT's with average feet? That's the question that is causing some to knock him. But Charlton has his issues too, and even though he's supposedly a better athlete than Barnett he ran a pretty average 40 at the Combine, just barely under 5.0 (4.92). Personally, I don't like either guy at #11. I don't think either guy is a top 11 prospect.

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When did hooker jump into top 5 stratosphere? I remember when he was a teens 20s type guy

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All the mocks I've seen have him in the top 7.