{"id":861140,"date":"2026-04-08T15:47:28","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T15:47:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/861140\/"},"modified":"2026-04-08T15:47:28","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T15:47:28","slug":"saints-land-human-missile-to-bolster-defense-in-latest-nfl-mock-draft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/861140\/","title":{"rendered":"Saints Land &#8216;Human Missile&#8217; to Bolster Defense in Latest NFL Mock Draft"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The New Orleans Saints are in the middle of a rebuild right now, but it was kick-started in a big way with the emergence of rookie quarterback Tyler Shough last season. Shough helped lead the team to multiple big wins down the stretch, which seemed to bring a lot of hope to the franchise.<\/p>\n<p>Now, they need to hit a home run with their top draft pick after landing a few impact players in free agency.<\/p>\n<p>CBS Sports&#8217; Garrett Podell recently <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbssports.com\/nfl\/draft\/news\/2026-nfl-mock-draft-pro-day-fernando-mendoza\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">put together a mock draft for the first round<\/a> of the 2026 NFL Draft. With the No. 8 pick in the first round, Podell projected the Saints would select Ohio State safety Caleb Downs to continue building their defense.<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSaints could benefit from taking the best player available<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The New Orleans Saints are in the middle of a rebuild right now, but it was kick-started in&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":861141,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2076],"tags":[7,896,55,2572,2571,6,397],"class_list":{"0":"post-861140","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-orleans-saints","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-new-orleans","10":"tag-new-orleans-saints","11":"tag-neworleans","12":"tag-neworleanssaints","13":"tag-nfl","14":"tag-saints"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116369873109610944","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/861140","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=861140"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/861140\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/861141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=861140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=861140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=861140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}