{"id":850531,"date":"2026-04-03T02:51:19","date_gmt":"2026-04-03T02:51:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/850531\/"},"modified":"2026-04-03T02:51:19","modified_gmt":"2026-04-03T02:51:19","slug":"pod-community-mock-with-the-8th-pick-the-saints-select","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/850531\/","title":{"rendered":"POD Community Mock: With the 8th pick, the Saints select\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

Congratulations to the New Orleans Saints for finally making it out of salary cap hell. This offseason, they managed to sign a bunch of new free agents and didn\u2019t even have to use void years<\/a>! Now, they must start hitting on their draft picks again if they want to compete in a volatile NFC South.<\/p>\n

As you may have guessed, the Saints are up next in our 2026 Pride of Detroit Community Mock Draft, where commenters act as team general managers. The Saints general manager in this year\u2019s mock is commenter GA_Lionsfan.<\/p>\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n

Before we get into their pick, here\u2019s a look at the first seven picks in the mock:<\/p>\n

With the eighth pick in the 2026 Pride of Detroit Community Mock Draft, the New Orleans Saints select Rueben Bain, edge defender out of Miami.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s GA_Lionsfan explaining the pick:<\/p>\n

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 \u2013 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 \u2013 now it\u2019s time to build around him.<\/p>\n

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

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 \u2013 the T-Rex) in the room \u2013 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

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

Time to grade the pick. Vote in the poll below and share your expanded thoughts in the comment section:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Congratulations to the New Orleans Saints for finally making it out of salary cap hell. This offseason, they…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":850532,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2076],"tags":[332,34195,13189,7,216,2972,4002,896,55,2572,2571,6,49756,71731,32194,397,51,7212,7150],"class_list":{"0":"post-850531","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-orleans-saints","8":"tag-college-football-playoff","9":"tag-college-station","10":"tag-drew-brees","11":"tag-football","12":"tag-miami","13":"tag-miami-hurricanes","14":"tag-mock-draft","15":"tag-new-orleans","16":"tag-new-orleans-saints","17":"tag-neworleans","18":"tag-neworleanssaints","19":"tag-nfl","20":"tag-pride-of-detroit","21":"tag-rueben-bain","22":"tag-rueben-bain-jr","23":"tag-saints","24":"tag-texas","25":"tag-texas-am-aggies","26":"tag-travis-etienne"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116338510114176825","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/850531","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=850531"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/850531\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/850532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=850531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=850531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=850531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}