Saints' Lorenzo Styles Jr. Pick is Overvalued and Shows New Orleans Still Doesn't Understand How to Build Around Carr

Here's what everyone is going to tell you about the New Orleans Saints' fifth-round selection of Lorenzo Styles Jr. in the 2026 NFL Draft: it's a solid developmental pick for a team that needed depth at receiver, a young player with good measurables who can grow into a valuable contributor, a B-grade that reflects smart drafting in the middle rounds. Here's what I'm going to tell you: it's the same kind of thinking that has kept the Saints spinning their wheels for the past several years, and it perfectly encapsulates why Dennis Allen's tenure in New Orleans is destined to disappoint despite having one of the most underrated quarterbacks in football in Derek Carr.

Let me be absolutely clear about something before I get into the specifics of why this pick misses the mark entirely. I like Lorenzo Styles Jr. as a player. The kid has legitimate talent. His athletic profile is respectable. His college tape shows flashes of genuine skill and competitiveness. He's the kind of receiver that can develop into something meaningful in the right system with the right coaching. But here's the problem that nobody wants to discuss because it's more comfortable to hand out passing grades and move on: the Saints don't need another developmental receiver in the fifth round. They need immediate impact players. They need to stop thinking like a team waiting for prospects to grow up and start thinking like a team desperate to compete right now.

The New Orleans Saints made a Super Bowl run in 2009 with Sean Payton because that team understood the concept of urgency. They brought in players who could help immediately. They didn't waste time hoping fifth-round picks would eventually become something. They won now. That's what championship organizations do. Fast forward to 2026, and the Saints are operating with the same conservative, patience-focused approach that has absolutely failed them over the past half-decade. They have Derek Carr. Derek Carr is a genuinely good quarterback who gets underrated constantly. He throws the ball accurately, he understands coverages, he's reliable and steady. He's not Patrick Mahomes, but he's significantly better than the carousel of quarterbacks most NFL teams have to endure.

So what does New Orleans do with a quarterback that good? They surround him with developmental projects and hope things work out. They make mid-round picks on receivers who might eventually be useful if everything breaks right. They cross their fingers and wait for young players to develop chemistry and understanding with their signal-caller. This is the opposite of how you build a winning offense around a quality quarterback in his mid-thirties. Derek Carr doesn't have unlimited time left to compete at a high level. Every single draft pick in the middle rounds should be evaluated through the lens of: can this player help us win in the next two to three years? If the answer is maybe, or we're not sure, or he has potential, then you've failed your quarterback.

The Saints needed to use that fifth-round pick on a player with immediate utility. That could have been a guard who could step into a starting role right away. It could have been a tight end who actually understands how to run routes and get open rather than another project. It could have been a linebacker who could contribute on day one to a defense that desperately needs intelligence and communication. Instead, New Orleans went with another receiver to develop. Look at their receiving corps. They have quality talent there already. They don't have a receiver shortage problem. They have a shortage of weapons that can impact a game right now, which is a completely different issue.

This is where the analysis gets really uncomfortable for people who like to be positive about draft picks. The fifth round is where talented teams separate themselves from mediocre ones. Great organizations use that round to identify players who are almost-but-not-quite ready for the league but have the foundational skills to contribute immediately or very shortly after arriving. Bad organizations use the fifth round to gamble on projects and hope lightning strikes. The Saints are clearly in the second category. When you're a team with a quarterback like Derek Carr, you don't get to gamble. You don't get to hope. You get to execute.

Dennis Allen knew this when he was hired. He understood that New Orleans needed to maximize every window with Carr. So why is he making these kinds of decisions? This is where the pick becomes not just about evaluating Styles Jr. as a prospect, which you could defend with a reasonable draft grade, but about understanding organizational philosophy. The Saints are still behaving like they're in rebuild mode. They're still operating as though they have time to develop players. They don't. They have maybe two or three years before Derek Carr starts showing his age, before his arm strength begins to decline, before his reaction times slow down just enough to matter.

Every pick in the fifth round carries enormous weight for a team in New Orleans' position. That pick represents a concrete resource that could have been spent on adding immediate value. Instead, it was spent on a lottery ticket. Lottery tickets are for teams with young quarterbacks or teams that are genuinely rebuilding. The Saints have neither excuse available to them. They have a window. It's closing. Every day, it closes a little more.

Look at the other receivers New Orleans already has on the roster. They're fine. They're competent. They're adequate. None of them are going to win you a playoff game through sheer dominance, but that's not the problem the Saints needed to solve in the fifth round. The problem they needed to solve was depth at positions that directly impact Derek Carr's ability to get the ball out quickly and efficiently, and positions that could deteriorate due to injury or ineffectiveness. A rookie receiver being developed in the fifth round does not solve either of those problems in any meaningful timeframe.

The grade this pick received from mainstream analysts reflects the conservative nature of modern draft evaluation. It's a safe grade for a safe pick. But there's nothing safe about wasting resources when you're operating on borrowed time. There's nothing smart about patience when patience is a luxury you don't have. The Saints should have looked at that fifth-round pick and asked themselves one simple question: will this player help Derek Carr win a playoff game in the next two years? If the honest answer is probably not, then you shouldn't make the pick.

Instead, New Orleans did make the pick, and now we're all supposed to nod along and accept that it was fine and reasonable and deserving of a B-grade for nice drafting in the middle rounds. I'm not going to do that. This pick is a failure of organizational vision. It represents another year of the Saints squandering the opportunity to compete with a genuinely good quarterback. Lorenzo Styles Jr. might become a productive NFL receiver. But he probably won't help the Saints win right now, and that's the only thing that should matter.

VERDICT: D-plus. Bad organizational thinking dressed up as solid drafting. The Saints needed immediate impact. They got a project. That's not acceptable when you have Derek Carr.