4 rounds – Syndication Server

Saints pick a couple of Washington Huskies in this 2024 mock draft

The Saints picked a couple of Washington Huskies college teammates in this 2024 mock draft, addressing two of their top needs:

We’ll start with the bad news: it’s tough to glean much from a four-round mock draft when the New Orleans Saints only own two picks. Out of the first 135 selections in the 2024 draft, just two belong to the black and gold (at Nos. 14 and 45). A series of trades by general manager Mickey Loomis has cost the team a lot of draft capital, and they don’t have much to show for it.

Now let’s focus on the good news. The Saints can still come away with two impactful players with these two picks. That’s what happened in this four-round mock draft from Draft Wire’s Curt Popejoy. And each player happened to come from the same school: the Washington Huskies.

In the first round, at No. 14, Popejoy has the Saints picking Washington left tackle Troy Fautanu. Popejoy alluded to Fautanu’s versatility, writing: “We love Troy Fautanu’s ability to play any spot on the offensive line.”

While he put up dominant tape at left tackle for Washington and excelled in the same outside zone-heavy running game that Klint Kubiak is installing with the Saints, some analysts feel his talents would be best employed at guard. If there’s any hope of Trevor Penning winning the starting job at left tackle, drafting a versatile blocker like Fautanu would allow the Saints to field their five best linemen.

What about the second round of this projection? Popejoy went back to Washington and picked wide receiver Ja’Lynn Polk for the Saints at No. 45. He isn’t as big as other wideouts in this class but he plays bigger than his frame (6-foot-1, 203 pounds with 32-inch arms) and wins on a lot of contested catches. He can make some nice moves with the ball in his hands, too. He’d provide a nice counterpunch to Chris Olave and Rashid Shaheed while leaving room for someone like A.T. Perry to carve out a niche in the offense.

It’s uncommon to see teams pick college teammates in the same draft class like this. Since the team was founded in 1967, the Saints have done it 31 times, and six times during Mickey Loomis’ run as general manager. So it’s more likely than you’d think.

What about the rest of this mock draft? The Saints don’t have any picks in the third or fourth rounds, but a trade or two is a very real possibility. They own four selections in the fifth round and two in the sixth, and New Orleans should definitely be seen as a team that could package some of those picks together to move up into an earlier frame.

If talented prospects slide down a bit, as happened in this mock draft with Western Michigan defensive lineman Marshawn Kneeland (who fell to No. 76), western Kentucky slot receiver Malachi Corley (No. 85), Boston College left guard Christian Mahogany (No. 92), LSU defensive tackle Maason Smith (No. 108), or Texas right tackle Christian Jones (No. 119), fans shouldn’t be shocked if Loomis cuts a deal to go get them.

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Mock Draft Monday: Cowboys focus on defense for Dan Quinn’s arrival

The Dallas Cowboys have a new defensive coordinator and Dan Quinn is going to need a lot of reinforcements to get the ship going in the right direction. If the Cowboys can find some spending capital, they’ll need to address some of their biggest needs in free agency, and that is even more of the case when looking at the strengths in this year’s draft class.

There isn’t a Top-10 lock player at either defensive tackle or safety, two of the three biggest needs going into 2021. Assuming Dallas addresses those needs in some level of free agency, they’ll still need reinforcements there as well as front-line starters at other positions. Here’s our attempt to round out those positions with impact players using The Draft Network’s simulator and scouting reports.

4-Round Mock Draft 3.0: What a no-trade back haul looks like for Cowboys

Team Tank has lost, so what comes next for the Cowboys when it comes to draft options? Plenty, actually, even if there are no trades.

Two months ago, when a top-five draft pick seems ordained for the Dallas Cowboys, the mission was clear. The club, with a 2020 season marred by injury to key performers on offense and hole after hole on defense, would be better served by trading back from their lofty perch to accrue more selections and address more needs. Two months later, and the team finds itself on a three-game winning streak and with a chance to go to the playoffs if things break right in Week 17.

The wins have been great for those invested in the team’s positive vibes, and a catastrophe for those on Team Tank. Dallas went from a shot at the No. 3 overall pick to currently sitting 11th. Even if they miss the playoffs, they could drop down to 16th depending on other team’s results on Sunday. So that brings another interesting aspect to the land of mocks. What happens if Dallas is in a position where no one wants to trade with them, or they don’t want to bail at all?

Trading down is a foregone conclusion in mock drafts. Algorithms are created where value charts and logic rule war rooms. There’s almost always a trade to be made. That certainly isn’t the case in real life, however, and there’s a good chance that Dallas could be in a situation where they leave the draft with their assigned lot of picks. That’s what we’ll do in this iteration, draft according to the positions Dallas is given.

We run mocks to help give a clearer sense of where players could be available, how going after one position early can mean missing out on a different position later and all that comes with the myriad of decisions front offices have to make.

The Cowboys have a variety of needs entering 2021, and although money is tight free agency will certainly impact this list prior to the draft. For now, here is the way we see each position, followed by our four-round haul.

4-Round Mock Draft 2.0: Cowboys get cake, trade it, eat for days

If the Cowboys ended up with 1 first, 2 seconds and 4 picks in the first 25 of the third round, would you be mad if the first player they took was on offense? Let’s ride, ladies and gents. | 2 CBs, a safety, 3 DL, a linebacker for the 2021 DC to play with.

This may not go over well, I already know but bear with me. It’s early in the draft process and rolling out mock after mock with the same players chosen will become repetitive very quickly. In our first mock, run a month ago, we had a small trade back and selected corner-corner-safety to hit the secondary with a barrage of high-level targets. All things being equal, that is likely going to be where we settle once it gets to mid-April. Bombard the secondary.

But four months prior? It’s imperative to consider every possibility. So what happens if the Dallas Cowboys are not enamored – for whatever reason – with the two cornerbacks most currently see as the top options? What happens if they aren’t enamored with the other defensive options projected for the top of the draft? Could they make moves backwards to stockpile picks, grab the best player on the board when they finally do select and then walk away with a mountain of defensive talent still ranked in their Top 30, 50, 100 players?

That’s what we did in this exercise, ending up with seven picks in the Top 88. This team has a talent deficiency, so rebuilding the base on defense is probably more important than finding a stud at one spot and leaving others to the end of the draft.

Assuming Dak Prescott is still the man in Dallas and will be under center for the foreseeable future, what about adding a fourth dynamic playmaker to his arsenal if it comes with a slew of defenders? Let’s rock.