# New Orleans Saints 2026 Coverage Report: One Beat Voice Owns Half the Graded Record

*Published 2026-09-07 — MissedTakes*

The [New Orleans Saints](/nfl/teams/saints) have not made the playoffs since 2020. They went 5-12 in 2024 and 6-11 in 2025, and enter this season under head coach Kellen Moore with Mickey Loomis still running the front office. On the field, that is a team with no reason to command national attention.

In our database, they command plenty of it — but from a very narrow set of mouths.

## The coverage baseline

Across every team in the database, the Saints have **804 tracked takes, 299 of them graded**. That is fifth-most in raw take volume (behind only the Bills, Rams, Eagles and Chiefs) and seventh-most in graded takes. The median team has roughly 222 graded takes; New Orleans clears that by more than a third.

The gap is starkest inside their own division. The Saints have more than twice the take volume of the Falcons (351 takes, 149 graded), and more graded takes than the Buccaneers (202) and Panthers (185) combined would suggest for a 6-11 club.

One caveat that applies to this whole series: this measures **the outlets we track**, not all football media. A team can be loud in our data because one diligent local show gets transcribed and graded, and quiet because its beat lives somewhere we don't ingest.

That caveat matters more here than almost anywhere. Of the Saints' 299 graded takes, **165 came from the Locked On Saints podcast** and **142 came from a single pundit, [Ross Jackson](/pundits/ross-jackson)**. Everyone else combined — Kyle Crabbs (11 graded), Dylan Sanders (8), [Rich Eisen](/pundits/rich-eisen) (6), [Chris Brockman](/pundits/chris-brockman) (6), [Daniel Jeremiah](/pundits/daniel-jeremiah) (6), Darrion Gray (5), [Mel Kiper](/pundits/mel-kiper) (5) — sits under sixty. The Saints are heavily covered in the sense that one person covers them heavily.

![Saints coverage in the tracked file](/posts/visuals/68236edd-15d1-4e10-b55d-542a0d3be097.png)

![Graded takes, NFC South](/posts/visuals/221c5548-75a2-470e-b1e5-63055996d5a3.png)

Collectively the record grades out at 53.5% accuracy with a skill delta of +20.66 — middling accuracy, but well clear of a naive baseline, mostly on the strength of mock drafts.

## The cutdown: 42 graded calls, 133 still waiting

Roster-spot calls are the news hook of this series, and here the Saints file is real but incomplete. There are **175 tracked roster-spot takes on New Orleans; 42 have grades**. The other 133 are still pending, so treat everything below as a partial verdict.

The graded 42 came in at **92.9% accuracy** and a skill delta of +19.05. Forty-one of them belong to Ross Jackson; the forty-second is [Doug Joubert](/pundits/doug-joubert) on [Daniel Carlson](/nfl/players/daniel-carlson) winning the kicking job, which was right. (Joubert has 62 roster-spot takes on file with exactly one graded — no record to rank, just a note.)

Ninety-three percent sounds enormous until you look at how our scoring treats it. Thirty-three of the 39 correct calls scored **zero skill**: naming [Alvin Kamara](/nfl/players/alvin-kamara), [Chase Young](/nfl/players/chase-young), [Cameron Jordan](/nfl/players/cameron-jordan), [Justin Reid](/nfl/players/justin-reid) and [Chris Olave](/nfl/players/chris-olave) as roster locks beats nobody, because the naive baseline — *he was on somebody's 53 last season, so he makes one again* — says the same thing for free.

Six calls actually beat that baseline, all of them players the naive method had off the roster:

| Player | Call | Skill |
|---|---|---|
| [Oscar Delp](/nfl/players/oscar-delp), TE (R3, No. 73) | "I'm going with Juwan Johnson, Noah Fant, as well as Oscar Delph." | +200 |
| [Bryce Lance](/nfl/players/bryce-lance), WR (R4, No. 136) | "pretty much as close to a lock as you can be as a fourth round pick" | +200 |
| [Barion Brown](/nfl/players/barion-brown), WR (R6, No. 190) | "even though he was a six round selection, very much has a role in this New Orleans Saints offense" | +200 |
| [Jayden Price](/nfl/players/jayden-price), CB | "a real shot to go from being a practice squad player last year to… make the 53 man roster… my dark horse right now" | +200 (×2 calls) |
| [Martin Emerson](/nfl/players/martin-emerson), CB | "Isaac Adam as well as Martin Emerson are right there as your primary depth" | +200 |

The Price call, [published June 7](/opinions/d05a1fe7-a37e-4a38-bdb8-7ce4c2eee64d), is the single best-graded Saints roster take in the file: a practice-squad holdover named as a dark horse nearly three months before cutdowns, then repeated as the fifth corner on [July 1](/opinions/43240125-25d4-4060-bbc1-fa62fe5cd6d9). Both scored 100 accuracy and +200 skill.

### The surprises that went the other way

Only three graded calls missed, and two of them are the same player. **[Chris Rumph II](/nfl/players/chris-rumph-ii) made the 53 after being written off twice.** In the July defensive projection, Rumph "ends up being another player kind of on the outside looking in… Hopefully, a veteran practice squad spot available for him." In the [final August 28 projection](/opinions/b43691e9-1673-4236-ba12-7d60ad3b95f5), a week before cuts and with more information available, the read hardened rather than softened: "Chris Rumph has been injured. You could probably get him back to your practice squad." Both graded 0 accuracy, −200 skill. Those two calls account for the entire negative side of the Saints' roster-spot ledger.

The third zero is a data caveat we'd rather flag than launder: the file has a [June 30 call](/opinions/5f4d7215-b47b-478d-8a8e-3199f34273ef) on rookie guard [Jeremiah Wright](/nfl/players/jeremiah-wright) recorded as "he does not make the 53," graded 0 accuracy — but the quoted evidence reads "Jeremiah Wright, I don't think there's any way he doesn't make this roster." The claim direction as parsed appears to be the opposite of what was said. It scored 0 skill either way, so it does not move the average, but it should not be read as a genuine miss.

## The rest of the file

Mock drafts are where the Saints' volume actually lives: **185 graded picks, 49.5% accuracy, +37.81 skill** — by far the largest graded bucket, and the one carrying the team's positive skill number.

The consensus win on that front was Arizona State receiver **[Jordyn Tyson](/nfl/players/jordyn-tyson), who went to New Orleans at No. 8**. Ten Saints-tagged Tyson calls are graded, all at 100 accuracy. Ross Jackson had him at eight [in January](/opinions/bfb35c3b-6a01-4b99-b5f4-e2bbebfe7736) and [again in April](/opinions/99b6f0d2-34e6-4358-b7ae-993c8db9f9dd); [Bucky Brooks](/pundits/bucky-brooks) had him at eight [on March 26](/opinions/28b96d8d-ec46-4340-8d2e-effa71a253dc) for +45.06 skill, the best-scoring of the group; [Charles Davis](/pundits/charles-davis), [Lance Zierlein](/pundits/lance-zierlein) and Rich Eisen all landed the same pick in April. This was not a bold call by the end — it was a consensus that formed early and held.

Everything else on the Saints is thin or bad:

- **Award picks: 17 graded, 0% accuracy.** Every graded Saints award pick in the database is wrong — three OROY picks for [Tyler Shough](/nfl/players/tyler-shough) in the 2025 cycle (winner: Tetairoa McMillan), plus a 2022 block of Chris Olave OROY and [Jameis Winston](/nfl/players/jameis-winston) Comeback Player ballots.
- **Season win totals: 7 graded, 60% accuracy, −32.89 skill.** For 2025, the naive number was 6.75 and the Saints won 6. [Brady Quinn](/pundits/brady-quinn) said 3-14 (−90 skill). Brockman and Eisen both projected a nine-win, over-.500 club (−49.95 each). Even [Gregg Rosenthal](/pundits/gregg-rosenthal)'s "Saints under five and a half before anyone else does," which was directionally sane, graded −10, because the naive line was closer than he was.
- Depth-chart calls (11 graded), sleepers (7), playoff picks (5), game outcomes (5) — all too thin to rank anyone on.

Among pundits with at least five graded Saints takes, Jackson (142 graded, 56.8% accuracy, +28.25 skill) is the only one with anything like a sample. He sits fifth on the [overall leaderboard](/leaderboard) at 67.2% accuracy across 194 graded takes — meaning roughly three-quarters of his entire graded body of work is this one team. Kyle Crabbs (11 graded, 21.4%) and Daniel Jeremiah (6, 63.9%) are footnotes by comparison, and we won't rank them here.

The honest summary: the Saints are loud in our data and quiet in the league, and if you removed one podcast from the sample, the file would be one of the thinnest in the NFC.