This week is the NFL Draft, it's one of the biggest sporting events of the year. If you want to roll your eyes at that idea, look at these facts. The NFL Draft beats the ratings for other sports marquee events every single year on TV. The first night of the NFL Draft regularly beats the NBA Playoffs, the Daytona 500, and nearly all regular season games for any sport outside of football.

Since Football is king in the American sports landscape, its really not a shock either. This is the biggest mixture of college and pro football every year. Players are selected after their college careers to join an NFL franchise. But the most important part of what makes the NFL Draft such a powerhouse, is hope.

Texas A&M v LSU
Photo by Jonathan Bachman/Getty Images
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Each NFL team has the opportunity to walk away feeling like a winner during the draft. Sure, sometimes teams make picks that "experts" and fans don't agree with, and a team can leave the draft with a lot of unhappy onlookers. But for the majority of NFL Drafts, its all about promise and hype.

The player your team picks in the first round could look perfect to fit a need. Or is projected to be a blue chip player. There's hope for every pick in the draft.

All of this excitement has also spawned a whole industry researching players, team needs, and draft positioning. This industry centers around the act of the "mock draft". Where "experts" project which players will be taken by which teams, and that's a great idea. Your favorite NFL team has needs, and they have draft picks...so lets see if they can match up who could fit.

The downside is when people get TOO invested in this. People can work themselves up looking at these projections, and really get upset when it doesn't go the way they want it to.

Instead of you having to sift through all of the mock drafts to figure out who might become a New Orleans Saint in the first round of the NFL draft, we went ahead and read through a ton of them. So after a deep dive into the world of mock drafts, here's a list of the players to learn about if you're a Saints fan.

New Orleans Saints 2023 First Round Mock Draft Projections

2023 NFL Draft Prospects From Louisiana Schools

These players were all invited to the NFL Combine this year, and may hear their names drafted during the 2023 NFL Draft.

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