After losing to Carolina, of all teams, in a game which was exceedingly difficult to lose and yet the Saints managed it anyway, Dennis Allen finally got the axe this morning.
— New Orleans Saints (@Saints) November 4, 2024
That Allen would get canned is the least surprising thing in Saints World this year. It was likely this would be his last year after 7-10 and 9-8 seasons the last two years with no real indication the team was ready to take a step forward and become a real playoff contender. Yes, the Saints came out of the gate hot in wins over Carolina and Dallas to start the season, but then came a seven-game losing streak (and counting), brought on partly by injuries but among those losses were games the Saints dropped not so much due to a lack of talent but because they were poorly prepared, poorly motivated and badly outschemed.
And at this point the lack of effort on the field just looks like a team ready to fire their coach.
Which is how you lose to Carolina, a club which seems like it would struggle against some of the top college teams.
The Saints are now the worst team in the NFL. They’ve been trending that way since the fourth or fifth week of the season, and we’re there now.
Does Allen’s firing fix that? Probably not. Rizzi getting the job is really a function of the Saints opting not to give much of an audition to the interim coach; anything short of a miracle finish in the last eight games will leave the team in possession of a very high first-round draft pick, and they’re going to be in the market for a new head coach.
What we don’t know about at this point, though, is how high up the reset will go.
As we’ve written, it really should go all the way to the top. Were Gayle Benson to sell the team to an ownership group committed to keeping the Saints in New Orleans it would likely be an ideal solution, but nobody knows whether that’s possible. Todd Graves, the founder and CEO of the Raising Canes’ fried chicken chain and Louisiana’s richest citizen, has been bandied about as a potential buyer. That’s all idle speculation.
What we know, though, is regardless of ownership this franchise needs a hard reset that at least starts with the front office. The Saints have drafted bust after bust in the first round, and as a result they’re – in Allen’s own words – without any elite young players. The established talent in the franchise are all declining players and Loomis has extended their contracts far out into the future so as to dodge the salary cap hit the club should have just taken two or three years ago when Sean Payton and Drew Brees left.
That means two things. First, the harder the reset and the more immediate pain the franchise suffers, the better. Tuesday is the trade deadline and the smartest thing the Saints could do would be to unload every player they have who has both positive trade value and a sizable contract. Word is that cornerback Marshon Lattimore is the subject of trade offers; auction him off to whatever team will give the best draft pick, or picks, for him. Ditto for other players like Alvin Kamara, Demario Davis, Chris Olave, Eric McCoy, Taysom Hill, Carl Granderson and anyone else some team in legitimate playoff contention might be willing to part with.
Get draft picks. Not players. The Saints need to start getting very young and very cheap, very fast.
Second, Mickey Loomis is the reason this franchise is in the dire straits it’s in, and he has to go. It would have been best if Loomis had been given a pink slip along with Allen, but that didn’t happen. What did happen, in that interesting press statement, was Loomis coming off almost like he was against the firing but Benson did it anyway.
Given that Loomis has been reputed to have a Rasputin-like hold on Gayle Benson, this indicates he might have hit the end of the line.
The Saints have to completely retool the front office. And they’ve got to get the youngest, hungriest, most aggressive coach they can find.
Lions offensive coordinator Ben Johnson might be the best assistant coach in the NFL. It’s a pity Johnson’s boss Dan Campbell couldn’t have been hired instead of Allen; Campbell was a former Saints tight ends coach and nobody was surprised when he turned out to be a fantastic head coach. But Johnson as a Campbell disciple would be a great hire.
So would Dan Lanning, the head coach at #1 Oregon. Lanning is smart and charismatic and he’s an elite X’s and O’s coach.
Go young, go cheap, take the biggest cap hit you can in 2025 in the knowledge that you’re going to tank both this year and next year in hopes that piling up draft picks and rebuilding a nucleus of young talent with which you can grow…that’s the only way out of this.
The Saints aren’t going to win more than a couple of games out of the eight remaining, and probably less than that. They probably aren’t going to win much next year. Those facts ought to be treated like features, not bugs. They need high draft picks, and they probably need to trade down to spin off more picks, for the next couple of years. And then, when there’s room under the cap and the team has a rebuilt nucleus of hungry young players and a good coach to develop them, it’ll be time to bring in some monster free agents to make a splash in 2026.
But with as many new faces as possible between now and then.
As high up in the organization as that can go.