The New Orleans Saints exited the 2025 NFL draft with one glaring need left to address: wide receiver. Specifically, a tall and long wideout who could add something to the offense that shorter, quicker options like Chris Olave, Rashid Shaheed, and Brandin Cooks lacked.

According to Saints general manager Mickey Loomis, it’s an item they were prepared to scratch off their to-do list in the draft, but other teams kept taking their targets. In some cases, teams traded ahead of the Saints to get a wide receiver they coveted. And one of them may have been Detroit Lions third-round pick Isaac TeSlaa, who was at the center of a bidding war on draft day.

The Athletic’s Michael Silver worked his way into the Jacksonville Jaguars war room before the draft, where he got an exclusive look at first-year GM James Gladstone’s inaugural draft. And he witnessed a bidding war in Jacksonville when TeSlaa, the Arkansas product, was available at No. 70 — one pick ahead of the Saints at No. 71. Here’s what he saw:

Shortly after the third round began, another potential option surfaced: The Detroit Lions called, floating a possible trade that would send their third-round pick (No. 102) and a pair of 2026 third-rounders to the Jags for the 70th selection, a fifth-round pick and a 2026 sixth-rounder. The Lions still weren’t sure they wanted to do the deal, but they were laying groundwork.

A few seconds later, Gladstone got an offer from the Rams: their second-round pick next year for the 70th selection.

Now there were three scenarios: Try to close the trade with the Lions; accept the trade with the Rams; or stand pat and take the player they wanted.

That’s some intense negotiating, and it suggests neither team believed TeSlaa would last much longer; the Lions weren’t picking again until the end of Round 3, with the Rams going up a bit sooner at No. 90. It feels like a safe bet that TeSlaa was squarely in the Saints’ crosshairs at No. 71, driving both suitors to take these desperate measures.

It makes sense, if that were the case. TeSlaa was one of the 30 players reported to visit the Saints on an official visit. At 6-foot-3.5 and 214 pounds and with an outstanding 9.93 Relative Athletic Score, he’s exactly the type of athlete the Saints would have been looking for. The only surprising thing here is that he didn’t produce in college after making the jump from Hillsdale, a Division II school in Michigan, to Arkansas. He totaled just 62 catches in 25 games with the Razorbacks, finishing at a distant second-place in receiving yards each of the last two seasons. TeSlaa’s teammate Andrew Armstrong, who wasn’t drafted, outgained him 1,140 yards to 545 last season and 764 to 351 the year before that.

So it would’ve been a gamble for the Saints to take such an unproven prospect at that point in the draft; many scouting services had TeSlaa rated as a fifth- or sixth-round pick. That other teams were so eager to draft him they packaged future assets to trade up and go get him? That’s interesting. Maybe the Saints were higher on him than the media was, just like the Rams and Lions were. Ultimately he ended up in Detroit and the Saints are still looking for that big body at wide receiver. New Orleans did end up with Texas defensive tackle Vernon Broughton at that spot, and he was a player Loomis said they expected to be a second-round pick. So getting him a round later at No. 70 was a great consolation prize.