Rookie Kelvin Banks Jr. unbothered with sampling several positions along New Orleans Saints offensive line

Firs-round pick: 'If you love football it shouldn't matter what position you're playing'

May 13, 2025 at 09:25 AM

John DeShazier

Senior Writer

New Orleans Saints players attended 2025 Rookie Minicamp workouts at the Ochsner Sports Performance Center on May 10, 2025.

At some point the New Orleans Saints coaching staff will begin the paring procedure for Kelvin Banks Jr., shaving down the responsibilities and assignments for their first-round draft pick.

But that process didn't begin during rookie minicamp last weekend for the team's first-round pick (No. 9 overall), and it won't likely be fully implemented for a few more OTA and minicamp gatherings.

On Saturday, Banks, exclusively a left tackle since his sophomore season in high school, lined up at that position as well as left guard and right tackle as the Saints seek his best fit along the line.

"Kelvin's going to play a couple of positions as we go, just kind of let these guys get settled," Saints Coach Kellen Moore said. "I think for us, it's just seeing these guys in different body positions.

"He went across the offensive line (Saturday) and we'll narrow our focus as we go through this process. I think for a lot of our guys, every position, we're trying to expose them to a couple different spots, couple different environments and just see how they respond, and then we'll settle them in as we go."

Banks – a consensus All-American last season at Texas who won the Jacobs Blocking Award, Lombardi Award (best offensive lineman in college football) and Outland Trophy (best interior lineman in college football) – totally is unbothered by the exposure. The 6-foot-5, 315-pounder just wants to play ball.

"If you love football it shouldn't matter what position you're playing," he said. "It shouldn't matter if you're out there only on special teams, it shouldn't matter if you're just a guard on field goal, just blocking. If you want to be out there on the field, you love football, then it doesn't matter what spot they put you at.

"The biggest thing I know in the NFL is that the more you can do, the longer you can stay in the league. So the more I can help my team, the longer I'll be asked to help my team win games.

"I appreciate them for trusting in me. Obviously, they picked me to kind of go out there and do what I do, so I just appreciate them for trusting me to be able to process that quickly and go out there and learn different positions and go out there and just play football."

The possibility of playing right tackle exists because the Saints have a starter at left tackle (Taliese Fuaga), and incumbent right tackle Trevor Penning possibly could be a better fit at guard. And Banks has put in snaps at right tackle during his workouts and periodically did so at Texas in practice.

He hasn't played guard, a position he possibly projected to entering the draft, but is more than willing to put in the work if it gets him on the field.

"(Never played guard) but I don't really care about where I play at," Banks said.

"The biggest thing (at guard) is the distance of contact, where the contact point starts. At guard, you're going to have going to have contact point quicker than at tackle, but other than that, it's football at the end of the day."

Playing football is why Banks is in New Orleans. At present he's absorbing loads of information, almost enough to cause overload.

"I wouldn't say yes, but I wouldn't say no just because the information that they're giving us, I'm kind of used to it because some of the stuff we ran at UT," Banks said. "It's kind of similar concepts.

"It's really just learning the coaches' terminology, how they want to do stuff and then going and applying it on the field."

Photos: Saints Rookie Minicamp 2025 | Day 1 Practice