With the Saints sacking head coach Dennis Allen after a seventh consecutive loss to drop to 2-7 on the 2024 NFL season, the bill finally became due in New Orleans on Monday.
With some of the organization’s most seasoned leaders publicly acknowledging their failure and the general expectation of a third consecutive non-playoff season for a team that was previously seen as a perennial NFC juggernaut, this is hardly a shocking turn of events.
However, it raises the question: What comes next? The Saints have disregarded the obvious advantages of a teardown and rebuild for years, both in their words and their deeds. Although Allen’s firing is consistent with the team’s recent difficulties and Allen’s own head coaching history, it also indicates that a fresh strategy has finally been implemented.
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Let’s start with remembering Allen’s initial rise to the position of head coach in 2022. This was no typical hire. Since Allen had been Sean Payton’s go-to defensive coordinator for the previous seven seasons, it was “safe” and purposefully un-splashy. However, Payton never saw his rise as a long-term strategy, openly praising Allen as a “great candidate” to take over the position while he worked out his own career and infamously “stepping away” rather than officially retiring after the 2021 season.
The Saints’ dedication to maintaining the status quo was evident in every aspect of this torch-passing, which essentially carried on the Payton era while releasing Payton from the responsibility of leading an old, costly club that was no longer led by Drew Brees, the all-time quarterback. And let’s be clear about it: From 2019 to 2021, the team’s record clearly declined, dropping from 13 wins to 12 to 9 with only one playoff victory in between. Allen’s 2022 debut saw him muster just seven victories, continuing the downward trend. Despite this, the team doubled down on its win-now strategy and paid a hefty price for Derek Carr, a “true” Brees successor who arrived in New Orleans with exactly zero playoff victories of his own despite being brave and experienced.
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Only a late-2023 push in a weak NFC South appears to have spared Allen and Carr for another trip this fall, and the results have been predictably average after one and a half seasons. Now that the former has been escorted off the train, Carr will soon say goodbye to New Orleans as well. Once more, he can’t be blamed for playing through pain and frequently behind poorly put together offensive lines, but at 33, lacking elite production or traits, and earning between $50 million and $60 million in the last few years of his contract, it’s difficult to see how he fits into the plan after this season.
Naturally, if Carr is genuinely expendable, then same can be said of almost every veteran on the Saints roster, and it probably will be. It’s hard to read Allen’s firing as anything other than an overdue admission that wholesale change has finally, reluctantly arrived—that the Payton era can finally, mercifully be laid to rest. However, CBS Sports NFL insider Jonathan Jones isn’t so sure New Orleans views the 2025 season as a stage for a complete overhaul. This is unless Saints brass pulls the ultimate double-down maneuver and seeks to pair this battered lineup with an even more established coaching candidate (e.g. Bill Belichick, Mike Vrabel).
This implies that Jordan, Marshon Lattimore, Demario Davis, Tyrann Mathieu, and other former or present fan favorites may be playing some of their final games while wearing Saints clothes. For the benefit of the supporters, it may also indicate that new infrastructure is soon to be installed. Naturally, it’s far more difficult to rebuild a serious contender. However, there are instances when trying is better than living in the middle and keeping telling oneself that everything will be fine year after year when it won’t be.
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