Recently, I was reading an article from CBS Sports where the writer made an interesting observation on the New Orleans Saints’ position in the 2025 NFL draft. Will Brinson wrote that, “the Saints won enough games this year where they don’t really have a great draft pick (No. 9 overall.)”
While that is an accurate description of the situation the Saints find themselves in, the phrasing caught my attention. Saying the Saints won enough games to hurt their draft position didn’t feel right when New Orleans only won five times.
So, I took a look at the past three years to see where winning five games would have gotten you. Since the NFL expanded to 17 games in 2021, five victories secured you top-six selection. The last two years a team picked fifth overall with just five wins. The Carolina Panthers picked sixth in the 2022 NFL draft, as the lone five-win team.
It’s not that the Saints won too many games per se, but rather that the NFL’s basement is more crowded than usual. In 2024, the entire top-10 has five wins or fewer. There are four teams with five wins this season, the most since 2019.
Winning five games would have guaranteed you to pick near, if not inside, the top-five. This year the ceiling is the seventh overall selection. New Orleans’ unfavorable positioning is truly a reflection of how bad the lower tier of the league has performed.
