{"id":850227,"date":"2026-04-02T23:10:21","date_gmt":"2026-04-02T23:10:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/850227\/"},"modified":"2026-04-02T23:10:21","modified_gmt":"2026-04-02T23:10:21","slug":"2026-nfl-mock-draft-new-orleans-saints-select-rueben-bain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/850227\/","title":{"rendered":"2026 NFL mock draft: New Orleans Saints select Rueben Bain"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup _1teeyfa8 ls9zuh1\">About a decade ago, the Saints started manipulating their cap by kicking the can down the road to try and win another Super Bowl before Drew Brees retired. It resulted in four straight division titles from 2017-2020, but they never reached the Super Bowl. Brees retired following the 2020 season and the Saints went into cap purgatory &#8211; they had player contracts that they couldn\u2019t move on from and do a complete reset, but also didn\u2019t have the cap space to add an impact player to be a real contender. This year they have not only been released from purgatory but also seem to have found their QB of the future &#8211; now it\u2019s time to build around him.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup _1teeyfa8 ls9zuh1\">They added Travis Etienne this offseason and have spent their last two first round picks on offensive tackles, so the only realistic offensive option for them at 8 is a wide receiver. However, with the way the board fell, they will need to focus on helping the defense and look to add pieces to their offense in later rounds.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup _1teeyfa8 ls9zuh1\">The best player on the board is Rueben Bain and he\u2019s an easy choice for the Saints. Let\u2019s address the elephant (or maybe more aptly put &#8211; the T-Rex) in the room &#8211; Bain has short arms. If he won with length, it would be a concern, but he wins with power and technique, which should translate to NFL success. If his arm length wasn\u2019t a concern, he would have easily been drafted already. Last season, everyone saw what kind of consistent impact he can have on the game. That\u2019s exactly the type of player the Saints need as they finally put the Brees-era players behind them and transition to the next era of players.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup _1teeyfa8 ls9zuh1\">McLaurin draws bracket or even double coverage, Lemon finds the soft spot underneath, and Daniels gets a safety valve who wins at every level of the route tree. A perfect addition for a rookie OC trying to get things back on track in Washington.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"About a decade ago, the Saints started manipulating their cap by kicking the can down the road to&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":850228,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2076],"tags":[448,5105,7,896,55,2572,2571,6,397],"class_list":{"0":"post-850227","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-orleans-saints","8":"tag-detroit-lions-draft","9":"tag-detroit-lions-mock-draft","10":"tag-football","11":"tag-new-orleans","12":"tag-new-orleans-saints","13":"tag-neworleans","14":"tag-neworleanssaints","15":"tag-nfl","16":"tag-saints"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116337641228665172","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/850227","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=850227"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/850227\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/850228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=850227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=850227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=850227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}