With the 12th pick the New Orleans Saints select Sheldon Rankins, DL Louisville

New Orleans is hoping that Sheldon Rankins can develop into a disruptive force.

The Saints addressed their defensive line with their first round pick by taking the defensive tackle from Louisville, Sheldon Rankins. He’s plays best as a penetrator at the 1 tackle or 3 tackle spots. He absolutely terrorized the well coached Florida State offensive line in 2015 and kept coming and coming at Goldson all game long.

He’s going to be best as a 1 gap tackle where he he ignores the play to just attack the backfield. And in Allen’s defense, this is what they got him for. Teamed with Nick Fairley and the rest of their tackles, Rankins will be asked to shoot the gaps and cause havoc.

The Saints’ defense is in need of a lot of help. Their secondary is poor, their linebackers have more talent than starting spots and their line is basically Cam Jordan, praying that Fairley rebounds and not much else. The premise of taking Rankins is that by penetrating into backfields, the talent around him will all look better. The rest of the defensive line will see less blockers, the linebackers won’t have as many blockers on them and by scrambling the offense the defensive backs won’t have to cover for 4-5 seconds.

There were some rumors that the Saints were in love with a quarterback and were considering moving up to the top picks for him. Then it was rumored that they would take Paxton Lynch. Both were clearly smokescreens from the team. The Saints are fine with Drew Brees now and Grayson moving forward.