Saints can extend nearly 50-year trend in first round of NFL Draft
Which direction should the Saints go with the 24th pick of the NFL Draft, which begins Thursday in living rooms and basements across America?
Wide receiver? Linebacker? The best available player?
Regardless, there’s a strong chance that Sean Payton and Mickey Loomis will extend a trend that pre-dates them and carries on not just longer than any other NFL franchise, but for half of the league’s history.
If the Saints do not select a quarterback Thursday night, it will mark the 49th consecutive year New Orleans has not taken a QB in the first round.
The Saints have not spent a No. 1 pick on draft day on a signal caller since January 1971, when it chose Archie Manning with the second overall pick. (It did use a No. 1 pick in the 1981 supplemental draft on Dave Wilson, but even if you technically count that pick, it is still the longest streak in the NFL.)
SInce then, the Saints have mostly made good moves at quarterback – signing Bobby Hebert out of the USFL, trading for Aaron Brooks and, of course, scooping up Drew Brees in free agency.
How crazy is the Saints’ streak? Heading into Thursday night’s opening round, 17 of the 32 NFL teams used at least one first-round pick on a quarterback in the last six years and all but four teams have gone for a signal-caller in the first round since 2003.
Here’s the chronological list of the last time teams spent a traditional first-round pick on a quarterback:
Last QB Taken, First Round | ||
New Orleans Saints | 1971 | Archie Manning |
Dallas Cowboys | 1989 | Troy Aikman |
New England Patriots | 1993 | Drew Bledsoe |
Seattle Seahawks | 1993 | Rick Mirer |
Cincinnati Bengals | 2003 | Carson Palmer |
Los Angeles Chargers | 2004 | Eli Manning |
Pittsburgh Steelers | 2004 | Ben Roethlisberger |
Green Bay Packers | 2005 | Aaron Rodgers |
San Francisco 49ers | 2005 | Alex Smith |
Las Vegas Raiders | 2007 | JaMarcus Russell |
Atlanta Falcons | 2008 | Matt Ryan |
Detroit Lions | 2009 | Matthew Stafford |
Carolina Panthers | 2011 | Cam Newton |
Indianapolis Colts | 2012 | Andrew Luck |
Miami Dolphins | 2012 | Ryan Tannehill |
Jacksonville Jaguars | 2014 | Blake Bortles |
Minnesota Vikings | 2014 | Teddy Bridgewater |
Tampa Bay Buccaneers | 2015 | Jameis Winston |
Tennessee Titans | 2015 | Marcus Mariota |
Denver Broncos | 2016 | Paxton Lynch |
Los Angeles Rams | 2016 | Jared Goff |
Philadelphia Eagles | 2016 | Carson Wentz |
Chicago Bears | 2017 | Mitchell Trubisky |
Kansas City Chiefs | 2017 | Patrick Mahomes |
Houston Texans | 2017 | Deshaun Watson |
Baltimore Ravens | 2018 | Lamar Jackson |
Buffalo Bills | 2018 | Josh Allen |
Cleveland Browns | 2018 | Baker Mayfield |
New York Jets | 2018 | Sam Darnold |
Arizona Cardinals | 2019 | Kyler Murray |
New York Giants | 2019 | Daniel Jones |
Washington Redskins | 2019 | Dwayne Haskins |
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Lenny Vangilder
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Lenny was involved in college athletics starting in the early 1980s, when he began working Tulane University sporting events while still attending Archbishop Rummel High School. He continued that relationship as a student at Loyola University, where he graduated in 1987. For the next 11 years, Vangilder worked in the sports information offices at Southwestern Louisiana (now UL-Lafayette) and Tulane;…