It’s been about a week since the Saints put together their 2017 Draft Class. It usually takes a lot of questionable decisions and risky moves for teams to generally get a poor draft grade from the “so-called” draft experts. Even fans who like to put their own grades on blogs and Twitter, will usually lean towards more optimistic scores. For the Saints, most of us were pretty much calling this 2017 Draft Class an average to above average job done by Mickey Loomis, Sean Payton, and Jeff Ireland. There have even been moments this week where we caught ourselves getting so into the positives about this class that we began throwing terms around like “shutdown corner” and “for years to come.” Now that the smoke has cleared and the dust has settled, off season phases are underway and these rookies will soon be reporting to put in real work, it’s time for us to take a real life look at the 2017 Saints Draft Class.
Pulling no punches and wiping the optimistic gleam out of our eyes, let’s take a look at just exactly what New Orleans got when they took Marshon Latttimore and Ryan Ramczyck in round one. First up is Lattimore, an Ohio State corner who while in college only took care of one side of the field. He didn’t follow the opponent’s best receiver around all game. He wasn’t up in the same guy’s chin for four quarters. He was not asked to do what he is being hyped up to do and that is being a shut down corner. Lattimore is physically gifted and over hamstring issues that delayed his getting a starter’s spotlight in Colombus. His twitch and mechanics project Lattimore to shut down wide outs, but in all honesty, he is inexperienced at being THE guy in the secondary.
Ryan Ramczyck comes from an offensive line factory in Wisconsin. He has the training and demeanor of a quality offensive lineman in the NFL. But Ramcyzck had hip surgery when his final season in college ended. Ramczyck is not a dominant bulldozer of a lineman either. He was solid in college. He didn’t pancake guys on the regular. He did his job. It’s always great to have a guy who can clock in and clock out, but will that be enough to immediately separate himself from Zach Strief who has been doing that very thing for over 10 years?
The Saints drafted players with more pluses on their scouting reports than minuses. Guys like Alvin Kamara and Alex Anzalone can do special special things. They are all capable of becoming very good NFL players, but let’s be honest; Alvin Kamara relies on superior athleticism rather than incredible football instinct. Alex Anzalone could not stay on the field in Gainesville. These are big things that these guys needs to work on and that still might not be enough. You cannot learn how to avoid injury completely. You cannot develop an eye for the hole that isn’t there. Do not expect any Saints draft pick to live up to their potential in year one. If you want real talk, the 2017 Saints Draft class will be successful if they can complement the talent already on the team and learn in the process. They are not saviors, these are young players who just need to contribute.