Is Stephone Anthony the greatest draft bust in Saints history?

Recently, we conducted a poll on Twitter asking who the biggest draft bust in New Orleans Saints history between Stephone Anthony, Marcus Davenport, Johnathan Sullivan or other. Marcus Davenport won the poll with a 37% but I am going to argue that it was recent biased and tell you why I think it was indeed Stephone Anthony and not Davenport who was the biggest bust.

Stephone Anthony was drafted 31st overall by the Saints in the 2015 draft. Stephone was drafted to be the future at the middle linebacker spot and while his stats his rookie year suggest he was more advanced, showed some very worrying signs. Many of his 112 tackles from his rookie season were assisted as Stephone didn't always show an ability to be the first one to the ball. He struggled in diagnosing plays, and it never improved after that. His coverage skills were nonexistent and even racking up all those tackles, he was only given a grade of a 55.3 for that rookie season. While flashes were sometimes there it never truly came together for him as a rookie. His second season with the Saints was even worse as Stephone struggled to get any playing time on a revamped linebacking core and then with two games left in the season, he was placed on IR with a hamstring issue. In his sophomore season, he was demoted from MLB to strong side linebacker, and things went even worse than when he was calling plays in the middle. So much so that SP and DA didn’t even get him involved on special teams. Stephone was then traded for a 5th round pick, and it was a shock they got even that high of one. In total, Stephone played just two seasons with the Saints and while showed small slashes as a rookie, was immediately demoted in his second year and then traded before his 3rd. He lasted just two seasons with Miami before resigning briefly with the Saints in 2019. Following his re-signing, he played sparingly only having 1 tackle. Stephone Anthony is now a Grad assistant coach at Clemson. Safe to say that his career as the future of the Saints' linebacking core was a major bust. Not only did Marcus Davenport last longer with the Saints, he was much more productive as he totaled 21.5 sacks in 32 games started over 5 seasons, including having 9 in 2021. Davenport was a more consistent player for the Saints and was on much better defenses compared to the horrid defenses Stephone led. While Davenport career with the Saints didn't reach the levels needed to resign him, the Saints valued him enough to keep him all through his rookie deal, as opposed to cutting ties like they did with Stephone. At the end of the day, recency bias came into play in our poll as Stephone is clearly the biggest Saints bust of all time.

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