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#Georgia NT Michael Barnett has held pre-draft meetings over FaceTime with the #Buccaneers, #Saints, #Ravens & #Dolphins. He had 23 tackles last season.
— Justin M (@JustinM_NFL) April 21, 2020
The New Orleans Saints just can’t quit adding talent to their defensive line. In addition to interviews with early-round prospects like Utah’s Leki Fotu and Texas A&M’s Justin Madubuike, Justin Melo over at Draft Wire reports that the Saints also touched base with Georgia Bulldogs lineman Michael Barnett.
Snubbed by this year’s NFL Scouting Combine, Barnett hoped to show out at Georgia’s pro day before it was canceled due to the novel coronavirus. The 6-foot-4, 304-pounder is a dark horse to be picked in the final rounds of the 2020 draft after posting a career-high 24 tackles last season. He played sparingly in the years before, having been buried on one of college football’s strongest depth chart.
It makes sense for the Saints to be doing their homework on players like Barnett. They’ve had success with these undrafted big men out of the SEC before, counting contributors like Devaroe Lawrence (Auburn), Taylor Stallworth (South Carolina), and Shy Tuttle (Tennessee) among the gems found in the rough. Lawrence signed with the Saints as a college free agent before getting traded to the Cleveland Browns for a draft pick, while Stallworth saw meaningful snaps in 2018 (19.8 plays per game) before Tuttle’s arrival in 2019 pushed him down to the practice squad.
With their final pick in this year’s draft coming at No. 203 (almost midway through the sixth round, with the entire seventh round still to go) the Saints should be very selective in their choices on the final day of the draft.
They also rank among the NFL’s leaders in players already under contract with 69 of 90 roster spots filled, so any undrafted free agents they bring in will face long odds of making it through final cuts. Still, Barnett is a name to remember once the draft wraps up, when teams will hit the phones hard to recruit players like him who have fallen through the cracks.
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