The interesting strategy that defined Saints drafts with Sean Payton

Five draft picks limits what you can do in the draft. Not having a pick in the first two rounds constricts you even more.

Which is why what general manager George Paton said last week at the NFL Annual Meeting in Phoenix was interesting — albeit not surprising — in regards to the Broncos’ potential draft strategy.

“It’s hard to move up when you only have five picks,” Paton said March 27. “We won’t rule anything out, but it’s hard. I would say we’d be more inclined to move back, to get some more picks. So, we’ll see how it goes.”

Getting more picks makes sense. But it also runs counter to the New Orleans Saints’ draft strategy during Sean Payton’s years there.

In Payton’s first draft — 2006 — the Saints had a compensatory pick. It was not one that came via a compensatory-draft-pick formula whose exact composition is as closely guarded as the formula to Coca-Cola or Colonel Harlan Sanders’ original fried-chicken recipe. Instead, it was a “supplemental compensatory pick,” issued in one of those rare years where free-agent movement doesn’t result in the league issuing enough compensatory choices.

New Orleans selected wide receiver Marques Colston with that choice, No. 252 overall. He racked up six 1,000-yard seasons and ended his career with a bushel of Saints records, including receptions, receiving yardage, yards from scrimmage and touchdowns.

One would think that would be enough to compel the Saints to structure their roster-building plan to facilitate more compensatory picks.

But if you thought that, you thought wrong.

And that leads to one of the defining aspects of Payton’s time with the Saints: They make fewer draft choices than anyone else.

For real.

From 2006-21, the Saints made 15 fewer draft picks than any other club. They made 94 selections — an average of 5.88 per year. The next-closest team, the Los Angeles Chargers, averaged 6.81 picks per year — nearly a full selection per year more than New Orleans.

The league average — with compensatory picks factored in — is 7.96 draft picks per year.

And while trades up and swaps for veteran players affected the Saints’ draft capital, so did the lack of compensatory picks. From 2006-21, no team had fewer compensatory picks than the Saints.

In that span, NFL teams averaged 16.5 compensatory draft choices. The Saints had four. The Rams and 49ers have as many comp picks this year as the Saints had over Payton’s 16 years.

Nearly all compensatory draft picks come when teams lose more unrestricted free agents than they sign. Some teams incorporate this heavily into their calculus as to whether to re-sign players.

The Saints weren’t one of them. And the Broncos’ free-agent haul this year makes it unlikely that they will have any compensatory picks in 2024, too.

This hasn’t kept the Saints from finding quality players. Fourteen of their draft picks in the Payton years made Pro Bowls while wearing black and gold. Six became first-team All-Pros there. In that same span, the Broncos drafted 12 players who became Pro Bowlers for the club and three first-team All-Pros. Denver had 34 more picks than the Saints. But in terms of finding high-level players. New Orleans was more efficient.

It was quality over quantity.

And with Paton having espoused the “more darts” strategy in the last two years, the Broncos’ draft tactics will be fascinating to observe. Because while their surnames have the same pronunciation, the draft philosophies of which they’ve been a part have been diametrically different.

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