METAIRIE – The New Orleans Saints have the No. 8 overall pick in the 2026 NFL Draft that gets started Thursday night.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Last year, the Saints selected offensive tackle Kelvin Banks at ninth overall. Banks went on to earn multiple All-Rookie honors after the 2025 season at left tackle.<\/p>\n
The Saints do have some holes to fill on their roster, but they plan to be very strategic when making their picks, especially in the first round.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“When we make a pick there, we want to have a lot of the questions answered about a player. You don’t want to pick a player that you have a ton of questions about and you’re just banking on the unknown,” Loomis said in Wednesday’s pre-draft press conference.<\/p>\n
“I think as you go farther back in the draft you’re a little more willing to take a chance on someone. But when you’re in the top 10 or top 12 \u2014 whatever the number is \u2014 you want to pick players that you have as little doubt as possible that they’re going to be successful.”<\/p>\n
The Saints have eight total picks in this year’s draft, with one pick in Thursday’s first round, two picks on Friday in the second and third rounds and five picks on Saturday in rounds four through six. The Saints do not currently have a seventh round pick.<\/p>\n
The first round of the NFL Draft is set to begin at 7 p.m. from Pittsburgh, Pa. The event will be televised on WBRZ.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"METAIRIE – The New Orleans Saints have the No. 8 overall pick in the 2026 NFL Draft that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":872516,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2076],"tags":[7,896,55,2572,2571,6,397],"class_list":{"0":"post-872515","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\/116452640939254034","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/872515","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=872515"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/872515\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/872516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=872515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=872515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=872515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}