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By Nick Underhill

The Saints took a risk in trading up to draft Marcus Davenport.

This fact is already known. There is no need to rehash the stakes. And even though snap judgments already exist about the deal, and it will be prematurely graded again after the season, it is probably going to take a few years before accurate evaluations exist.

That doesn’t mean we’re done discussing it. Not even close. One of the more interesting aspects of the trade came to light when ESPN's Mike Triplett pointed out that a deal like this has never happened before. It was the third time in the past 15 years that a team packaged two first-round picks to select a non-quarterback (the other two were receivers), and the first time a team dealt two first rounders to acquire a pick outside of the top 12 (the Saints moved up from 27 to 14 in exchange for next year's first-round pick and a fifth-rounder).

That doesn’t mean any deal for a non-quarterback who isn't Julio Jones is misguided. The Saints would have been better off making the same deal to move up from 27 to 14 in 2007 to get cornerback Darrelle Revis, which would have cost them Robert Meachem and whomever they would have picked in 2008 instead of trading up for Sedrick Ellis (assuming they still got guard Carl Nicks in the fifth). And no one would be questioning a team for making a similar trade to select J.J. Watt in 2011.

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