B
New Orleans Saints
Stowers should have been long gone. The Saints pounced, and earned a B.
by NFL DRAFT ·
2026 NFL Draft
· 10 picks
· 2 steals
· 1 reaches
This is the pick they will still be bragging about in July: Eli Stowers, the No. 53 name on the board, stolen at slot 73. It nets out to a B, which feels about right.
It is not that Perkins Jr. is a bad player; it is that the Saints had louder needs to answer first. That edge rusher hole did not close this weekend, and it was the biggest one on the wall.
The Caldwell reach is the anchor dragging on the value grade.
Good work on the whole, with edge rusher the one box left unchecked.
Pick-by-Pick
In No. 28 they get a coverage-and-run second-level piece at fair value. Need was not the driver here.
Emmanuel Pregnon at Round 2, Pick 6 is right where the board had him, plain and simple. A glaring weakness, addressed head on.
D'Angelo Ponds at the 42nd overall pick is neither steal nor reach, just the going rate. A must-fix position, and they treated it like one.
Zachariah Branch in slot 59 is exactly on the number, no argument either way. It answers the question that was keeping the coaches up at night.
A tight end of that caliber at pick 73 is the definition of value, full stop. It plugs a real leak on the depth chart.
They barely believed it either: Davison Igbinosun still on the board at pick No. 132. It also answers one of the loudest questions on the roster.
They zigged when the board said zag, taking Harold Perkins Jr. at linebacker with edge rusher, quarterback and other spots open.
No edge and no loss on Skyler Gill-Howard in the Round 5 slot; it is a wash and a sensible one. One more legitimate question on the roster, answered.
The board had cheaper options than Jeff Caldwell at the 172nd pick, and it noticed. Better still, it is exactly the hole they had to fill.
A clean, defensible pick in the 190th overall pick with a little surplus value in Josh Cameron. The biggest hole on the depth chart just got a whole lot smaller.