METAIRIE, La. — Tyler Palko sees an upside to being passed over in the NFL draft.

The former Pittsburgh Panthers quarterback got to choose the NFL team he would attempt to make as a rookie free agent — and New Orleans Saints coach Sean Payton made that decision an easy one.

“He talked to me and said the things I wanted to hear as far as being honest,” Palko said Sunday between practices at the Saints’ rookie camp. “He didn’t care about how tall I was. He didn’t care about all those other things. He felt that I could play football and, I mean, that’s all I cared about. ... If you have someone that believes in you, that’s really what you’re looking for.”

That’s especially true for someone like Palko, who lacks the “measurables” NFL coaches and scouts talk about before each draft. At 6-foot-1, he is on the short side for an NFL quarterback. And while the lefty can throw a decent pass, his mechanics and arm strength never set him apart from other prospects.

When the Pittsburgh-area native won a state championship for West Allegheny High School and won the Associated Press Pennsylvania Big School Player of the Year honors in 2001, he heard skeptics say he should try to become a safety in college.

“If there was a pill I could take to get taller, or ... make me more flashy and all that other stuff that (scouts) look for, I’d take it,” Palko said. “But sometimes there’s things you measure, like height and weight and all that stuff, and there’s things you can’t measure and you just deal with them.”