New England Patriots Trade Pick; New Orleans Saints Select Mark Ingram With 28th Overall Pick

With the 28th overall pick in the 2011 NFL Draft, and after the Kansas City/Baltimore confusion, the New England Patriots (surprisingly) traded their pick to the New Orleans Saints. The Saints, as I predicted earlier, moved up (with a 2011 2nd round pick and 2012 1st round pick) to select Alabama running back Mark Ingram.

Why did I say this would happen? The Saints needed a workhorse running back. Pierre Thomas gets hurt too often, Reggie Bush is an overpaid third down running back, and Christopher Ivory had an injury prone rookie season. All that adds up to a nonexistent Saints running game and an out of balance offense. The 2010 Heisman Trophy winning running back will change all of that. Ingram can run between the tackles, get the tough yards, is a willing blocker, and can catch passes out of the backfield.

At the end of the day, Ingram makes that offense better and is the missing piece to bring them back to a well-balanced attack. The Saints got tremendous value with Jordan and a much needed piece in Ingram - one of the big day one draft winners. For the Patriots, they have three 2nd round picks tomorrow and two first round picks in 2012 - which they can trade for more draft picks. Once again, the Patriots only move down, not up, in the draft.