Jeff Ireland explains how Saints pare their draft board to limit the
margin of error
Saints Assistant General Manager / College Scouting Director Jeff Ireland watches the workouts during Tulane Pro Day at New Orleans Saints headquarters on Tuesday, April 3, 2018. (Photo by Michael DeMocker, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)
The New Orleans Saints scouting staff has spent the past year learning as much information as possible about the prospects in the 2019 NFL Draft, and before the selection process begins Thursday (April 25), the team pared its draft board to remove players that won’t fit with the Saints for one reason or another.
This year’s draft has 254 picks, but the Saints’ board has less than 150 players, and Jeff Ireland, the team’s assistant general manager and college scouting director, explained during an interview with WWL radio Thursday why the team eliminates some prospects.
“I think we’ve just learned how to cut down our margin for failure a lot more,” he told WWL hosts Zach Strief and Deuce McAllister. “We’ve cut down the number of players that we put on the board. I think we cross-check a lot more. We’ve put a lot more effort into a particular player. We’ve come up with a philosophical system in place and really, look if a guy doesn’t fit, we get him off the board. If a guy’s got the character (issues) and we don’t like it, we get him off the board.
“We don’t muddy the water. We really try to nail the character. … We really study why do players fail in this league, why do players have success in this league? So, we really try to pinpoint comparisons of guys and things like that, but I think more than anything else, you just cut down your margin for error, increase your margin for success, and I think that’s the biggest difference.”
Ireland’s response followed a question about what has changed in the scouting process since he arrived in 2015. Teams obviously learn from mistakes after picking players with red flags, but the Saints are trying to be proactive in determining which red flags will ultimately lead to a player failing to meet expectations. Picking a player who’s falling in the draft because of injury history or off-field concerns can sometimes pay dividends, but if the specific issues have been tough for others to overcome, it might not be worth the risk.
A draft board with about 150 players has become the standard for the Saints as they try to limit their misses, but they still grade plenty of other players. Ireland said the team puts players that aren’t on the board into different tiers to help them pursue undrafted players. Last year, for instance, Ireland said the Saints had defensive tackle Taylor Stallworth, wide receiver Keith Kirkwood and safety J.T. Gray in the top category called “go-get,” and all three of them ended up playing at some point in the 2018 regular season.
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