There is still a game to play on the Saints schedule, but for all intents and purposes, the season was over midafternoon of the first Sunday last month when the team lost to Carolina, 23-22, which was then 1-7 and the team with the worst record in the NFL coming into the game. It was a barometer on just how far the team had fallen by the midway point of the season. On opening day, the Saints beat Carolina 47-10. The next week, New Orleans shellacked the Cowboys in Dallas and preseason concerns about the ’24 squad started to subside. A seven-game losing skid followed, and the Monday after the crash in Carolina, team owner Gayle Benson, after speaking with players and hearing from fans, ended head coach Dennis Allen’s tenure in the Crescent City.
Allen was promoted from defensive coordinator to head coach when Sean Payton retired after the 2021 season. In Payton’s last five seasons at the helm, the Saints went 11-5 in 2017, 13-3 in 2018 and 2019, 12-4 in 2020, and 9-8 in 2021. The team won the NFC South Division four straight years from 2017-2020 and finished second in 2021. Of course, Payton had future NFL Hall of Fame quarterback Drew Brees in those division championship-winning years and decided to move on from New Orleans a year after the quarterback retired.
Under Allen, the team went 7-10 in 2022 (3rd NFC South) and 9-8 (2nd in division) in 2023, missing the playoffs both years. The 2-7 start to the 2024 season gave him a record of 18-25 in New Orleans.
Since Brees retired, the Saints have had a revolving door under center. Allen settled on quarterback Derek Carr. While he had an amazing start to 2024, things changed in Game 3, when center Erik McCoy exited the game after just three snaps. Wide receivers Rashid Shaheed (knee, out for the season) and Chris Olave (concussion) were lost in a Game 6 loss to Tampa Bay. Taysom Hill missed some time, and Carr missed three games with an oblique injury, forcing the Saints to turn to backups — rookie Spencer Rattler and second-year pro Jake Haener. And Olave suffered a second concussion in Game 9.
General Manager Mickey Loomis was a staunch defender of Allen since promoting him. In a statement after his release, Loomis cited “an avalanche of injuries” the team suffered and called Dennis Allen “a fantastic football coach.”
Loomis’ praise of Allen may, in fact, be a mea culpa. After all, Loomis has been in charge of making sure the team’s payroll fits under the NFL’s annual salary cap, and for years, he made financial moves that appeared genius and provided New Orleans a winner. It has been under his leadership that the Saints won their only Super Bowl, and the four-year run from 2017-2020 — a last ditch effort to get another championship — was mortgaged with today’s roster paying the cost. Dead money — funds going toward players no longer on the roster — has impeded the team from keeping rising stars and building depth. Unfortunately, it caught up to them this year.
Talk of a rebuild has been circulating in the Crescent City since Brees retired. The team has fallen from playoff caliber to middle of the field, to the lower echelon. Now is the time for that rebuild to happen. It’s going to take time and a lot of patience.
The fact that the Saints season turned out to be what it is shouldn’t be surprising, but the blowout wins to start the season set fans up for a harsh reality as the season played on. We were told not to expect much, but jeez. The offseason will begin the afternoon of Jan. 5, but work on the 2025 season has already begun. There will likely be a revolving door at Saints headquarters as coaches and players come and go. Right now, the Saints are selling hope of a better tomorrow, but the reality is this could be one of the most impactful offseasons — for good or bad — in the franchise’s history.
Chris Price is an award-winning journalist and public relations principal. When he’s not writing, he’s avid about music, the outdoors, and Saints, Ole Miss and Chelsea football.
