Saints go get the guy they wanted in Kool-Aid McKinstry

METAIRIE – The New Orleans Saints followed a familiar script on the second day of the NFL Draft on Friday.

One of their draft tenets is to trade up when they see an opportunity to get a player they have targeted and can get him at a spot that represents good value.

“We couldn’t help ourselves,” head coach Dennis Allen quipped. “Early on we had to move up and go get somebody.”

They weren’t going to trade up just to trade up, but the start of the second round made it enticing to do so.

When Alabama cornerback Kool-Aid McKinstry, who was projected as a possible first-round choice, started sliding early in the second round, the Saints took notice. They held the 13th pick in the round (No. 45 overall) and two other positions on their radar were weakened as two wide receivers and four defensive tackles went in the first six picks.

When the Philadelphia Eagles grabbed Iowa’s Cooper DeJean with the seventh pick, that signaled a potential run on cornerbacks, which materialized as McKinstry was the second of four cornerbacks taken with consecutive picks.

Allen said the Saints had targeted “a couple of” cornerbacks “on our board” at the start of the second round. One was McKinstry.

“He kept sliding, but we weren’t sure he was going to be there when we picked,” Allen said, “and we had enough ammunition to go get him.”

New Orleans traded two of its seven picks for Saturday’s final four rounds – No. 168 in the fifth round and No. 190 in the sixth round – to the Green Bay Packers to move up four spots for McKinstry.

It was the 26th consecutive in-draft trade that New Orleans has made that produced a move upward.

The aggressive move to grab a cornerback in the second round naturally brought to mind the status of Marshon Lattimore, the Saints’ top cornerback and a four-time Pro Bowler for whom the organization has entertained trade discussions.

But Allen cited a series of reasons for the selection that didn’t involve a potential trade of Lattimore.

One was that it’s a really important position that requires significant depth.

“We go into most drafts seeing if we can add a corner,” Allen said. “I went into this draft thinking I’d love to get a corner to add some depth. You can never have enough good corners. We value the position. It allows us to play defense the way we want to play.

“We’ve had to have our fourth and fifth cornerbacks play a lot of snaps the last couple of seasons.”

One of the reasons the cornerback depth has been tested the last two seasons is injuries to Lattimore, who missed the last seven games of last season and 10 games in 2022. On top of that Isaac Yiadom, who started and played well as a fill-in for Lattimore last season, signed with the 49ers as a free agent.

“Marshon is a valuable part of our team,” Allen said. “He’s been a valuable part of our team and we look forward to him being a valuable part of our team.”

Allen said he hasn’t talked to Lattimore “in a while,” which he said is not unusual during the off-season and that he was confident that the cornerback was getting himself into shape for training camp as he has traditionally done.

As for McKinstry, he joins one of the more talented position groups on the team.

In addition to Lattimore, a No. 1 pick from Ohio State in 2017, Paulson Adebo, a third-round pick from Stanford in 2021, and Alontae Taylor, a No. 2 from Tennessee in 2022, have played well, despite some inconsistency in their young careers.

McKinstry, whom Allen said is “highly intelligent and highly instinctive” was primarily an outside corner at Alabama, but Allen said he will also be utilized as a slot corner, much as Taylor has been.

A punt returner as well as a cornerback, McKinstry, 6-foot-1, 195 pounds, left school a year early and was projected as a possible first-round pick, but a foot fracture was discovered during a medical evaluation at the NFL Scouting Combine and he missed the workouts.

After limited participation in Alabama’s Pro Day he underwent a procedure on the foot and is expected to be healthy for training camp.

Pre-draft profiles of McKinstry described him as a top-flight cover corner, but not necessarily an elite playmaker. He explained his approach to the position in a post-selection Zoom call with reporters who cover the Saints.

“Cornerback is a position that everybody can see a mess up,” he said. “So I play the game the right way, I play the position the right way. I don’t gamble unless I know I can make the play. I feel like that’s the way the game is supposed to be played.

“Sometimes you can gamble and it looks good. Sometimes you can gamble and it’s going the other way.”

McKinstry added that “someone who has never seen a football game knows when a cornerback has messed up.”

“That’s why I play the game the right way, I play cornerback the right way,” he continued. “I don’t want to be that guy.”

McKinstry, whose given name is “Ga’Quincy,” got the nickname “Kool-Aid” on the day he was born when his grandmother got her first look at him and said he had “a Kool-Aid smile.”

New Orleans, which selected Oregon State tackle Taliese Fuaga with the 14th pick in the first round Thursday, has five picks entering Saturday. It has three picks in the fifth round (Nos. 150, 170 and 175), one in the sixth (199) and one in the seventh (239).