The New Orleans Saints didn’t draft Barion Brown to be a carbon copy of Rashid Shaheed, but they did bring him in to attack the same problem.
Shaheed’s move to the Seattle Seahawks left a clear opening in the Saints’ return game, and Brown arrives with the kind of speed that can make that job feel a lot less empty. New Orleans took the former Kentucky and LSU playmaker in the sixth round of the 2026 NFL Draft, No. 190 overall, betting on a player whose college résumé already stands out for one glaring reason: he knows how to flip the field.
Brown finished his college career second in NCAA history with six kickoff return touchdowns. That number alone explains why the Saints saw him as a fit for the role Shaheed once owned. The burst is there, the short-area quickness is there, and the return-game pedigree is real.
But that’s only part of the conversation.
Shaheed grew from a return ace into a dependable deep threat and a receiver who forced defenses to respect the top of the field. He was catching 46-plus passes a year and making opponents account for him every snap. Brown, for all his explosiveness, is still more of a work in progress on offense.
His college production included 175 catches for 2,060 yards in 50 games, solid numbers that also hint at how he was used. A lot of those touches came through screens, jet sweeps and simple drags, not a full menu of routes. That’s why the Saints’ hope for Brown should start with the return game, even if the upside stretches beyond that.
The comparison to Shaheed makes sense because the traits line up. The question is whether Brown can turn those traits into the same kind of weekly impact once the ball is in his hands.
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