Look, I’ll admit it – I thought Dennis Allen was a good choice to succeed Sean Payton. Allen had done a hell of a job as the Saints’ defensive coordinator during the Payton years, and I was willing to waive my concerns about his stark failure as head coach of the Raiders because of the success he had in New Orleans.

But we’re two years into Allen’s tenure as the Saints’ head coach and even though he can now say he’s had a winning season, something he couldn’t say before, it’s becoming pretty clear that this experiment isn’t really going anywhere.

The Saints’ 48-17 blowout win over the Atlanta Falcons on Sunday was fun to watch. But it turned out to be cotton candy. While the Saints were annihilating Atlanta and finishing off Arthur Smith’s career as the Falcons’ head coach – Smith was fired last night after finishing with a 7-10 record – the Tampa Bay Buccaneers were busy finishing off the NFC South division title with a nondescript-as-hell 9-0 win over hapless Carolina. The only touchdown that would have been scored in the game was a long catch-and-run by former LSU wide receiver D.J. Chark, playing for the Panthers, but Chark fumbled the ball into the end zone at the end for a touchback. Carolina never threatened again.

And then the Saints needed victories by the Bears over Green Bay and by Arizona over Seattle in order to make the playoffs. Neither of those happened.

Thus the effect of that win over the Falcons ended up being negative – because of a 9-8 record rather than 8-9, the Saints just dropped several spots in their NFL Draft position, with nothing but a moral victory to show for it.

Even the moral victory is attenuated. The last seven points scored in the game turned out to be an embarrassment for the franchise. With less than two minutes left in the game and Atlanta trying to make things somewhat less embarrassing, Tyrann Mathieu jumped in front of a pass and returned his interception all the way to the one yard line.

Allen then sent backup QB Jameis Winston out with the offense to line up in victory formation and kneel on the ball three times to end the game. Instead, Winston handed off to running back Jamal Williams, who hadn’t scored a touchdown all year (after scoring an NFL-leading 17 for the Detroit Lions last year), and Williams barreled his way into the end zone for the game’s final margin.

That gave Smith occasion to screech at Allen after the game, and Allen responded by hanging the players out to dry in the postgame press conference.

So what do you have? You have a coach who’s had two years with a playoff-caliber roster in a playoff-friendly division (Atlanta, Tampa and Carolina are far and away the weakest set of division opponents anybody could have over the past couple years) and he’s failed to get there both years.

You have a quarterback you’ve invested $150 million in, and especially in the second half of the season he’s paid off a good chunk of that investment, but you’ve wasted his talents by putting a deficient offensive line in front of him.

You have a team which is growing very old very fast, with a number of marquee players – Alvin Kamara, Mike Thomas, Demario Davis, Mathieu, Cameron Jordan – who are either beginning or are fairly far along in the decline of their careers.

This team should have been an 11- or 12-game winner. It should have won the division. We saw a little bit of why it didn’t at the end of that game on Sunday.

The head coach isn’t inspiring the players on that team to follow directions. Whether Allen was right or not in wanting to kneel on the ball doesn’t matter. When the coach gives orders, the players have to follow them or you have chaos. And chaos is what the Saints have had all year, whether it’s Carr getting in screaming matches with center Eric McCoy or wide receiver Chris Olave, or the multiple blowups along the Saints’ sideline observed this year. You have some good leaders in that locker room and you still don’t have the kind of cohesion you need to compete with the good teams in the NFL.

Those nine wins were mostly against bad teams. When the Saints played quality opponents this year they generally folded, and that’s why they’re not in the playoffs.

So what’s to be done? Well, team owner Gayle Benson and the Saints’ front office have said that Allen isn’t going anywhere. It appears that offensive coordinator Pete Carmichael, who has been around since Payton first showed up on Saints Drive, will be made the scapegoat for missing the playoffs. Carmichael won’t likely be missed, as his offense was a mess for most of the season and a lot of talent was wasted in the process, but his ouster doesn’t really solve the problem that Allen simply isn’t a forceful, engaged leader like Payton was.

He’s not an alpha like, for example, a Bill Belichick or John Harbaugh are. And while you could perhaps paper over that problem if you had a singular leader in the locker room like Drew Brees was for the Saints, Carr – productive though he was, especially in the second half of the season – isn’t really that guy.

And this thing isn’t going to end well, ultimately. The offensive line is a mess and that’s going to get worse next year with the impending loss of Ryan Ramczyk as the right tackle due to health reasons, Kamara is likely done though with Williams and Kendra Miller the Saints seem to be in decent shape at running back, Olave as WR1 is questionable given the clear chemistry problems between him and Carr (Rasheed Shaheed might actually fit that bill better than Olave, which leads to even more chemistry questions), and on defense your leaders are all declining players.

So 9-8 this year might just be a high-water mark.

Maybe it’s better to just let this thing ride down into the muck next year, let Allen take the hit and then make a change when you have a high draft pick coming and some of the salary cap consequences of general manager Mickey Loomis’ yearly kick-the-can-down-the-road machinations finally behind the team.

But that isn’t much for the fans to hang on to.

There isn’t a lot of decisive leadership to be found in the Saints’ franchise right now. Instead there’s mediocrity. And mediocrity inevitably declines into failure. If that isn’t what Gayle Benson wants to be known for, she’s going to have to think differently and aggressively about this team.