2 weeks Ago
New Orleans Saints head coach Dennis Allen watches a playback during the first half of a preseason NFL football game against the Tennessee Titans at Caesars Superdome in New Orleans, Sunday, Aug. 25, 2024. (Photo by Sophia Germer, The Times-Picayune) New Orleans Saints head coach Dennis Allen answers questions from the press about practice on the eleventh day of training camp at Crawford Field at University of California, Irvine, Calif.
, Monday, Aug. 5, 2024. (Photo by Sophia Germer, The Times-Picayune) The outside noise surrounding the New Orleans Saints has reached decibel levels almost like what you hear in Caesars Superdome on a Sunday afternoon.
That's what happens after three straight seasons of missing the playoffs, including the last two years under head coach Dennis Allen. The noise will become downright deafening if things don’t turn around in what certainly must be a make-or-break season for Allen. Another season missing the playoffs, and you can probably forget all that patience that Saints general manager Mickey Loomis talked about when he pulled that notecard out of his pocket in January and compared Allen’s record in his first two seasons to the early careers of coaching legends Tom Landry, Chuck Noll, Bill Walsh and Bill Belichick.
“Sometimes the hard thing to do is to be patient and recognize your other shortcomings and get those fixed, and that’s what we’re doing,” Loomis said that day. Here's what that fixing has entailed. In Year 1, Allen revamped his defensive coaching staff.
In Year 2, he brought in the quarterback he wanted in Derek Carr. This season, he hired offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak to revamp the offense. So now, it’s all on Allen, who had this to say at his introductory press conference when he took over as Sean Payton's replacement in January of 2022: "I want to create my own legacy here with the New Orleans Saints.
" The next five months should go a long way in determining if Allen gets to do that. His players have bought in to his message this offseason of being "a tough, smart, and competitive" football team. The oddsmakers in Vegas are doubtful.
They've set the over/under on wins this season for the Saints at just 71⁄2, projecting a second losing season in three years. But Allen doesn’t pay attention to what’s being said away from 5800 Airline Drive. And he hasn’t spent time having to tell his players to block out the noise.
“Handle our business inside the building,” Allen said. “I think that’s just one thing that you have to learn to do, whether you’re a professional athlete, a coach, in the front office or whatever the case may be. We have a profession where everything that we do is lived out in the public eye, and everybody has opinions on what we’re doing well and what we’re not doing well.
That just comes with the job.” If the Saints miss the playoffs this season, it would be the first time the Saints failed to reach the postseason four straight years since a stretch under Jim Haslett from 2001-2005. The Saints went three straight years without a trip to the playoffs from 2014-2016 under Sean Payton but followed that up by winning the NFC South four years in a row.
Can this year’s team get back to the top of the division and go on a similar run? Demario Davis thinks so. And he strongly believes Allen is the man to lead them there. “I don't know how he's handling (the pressure) or whatever, but I know how I feel about him, and he's the right man for the job,” Davis said.
“To be in this situation, to be where we are and have underperformed, and now we've got to rise to the occasion. I've been going to war with this man for seven years, and when the pressure is on, he is always putting us in position to win. He's giving us every opportunity to succeed.
That's all you can ask for in a coach.” Davis points the blame of the recent struggles more on the shoulders of the players' inability to do all the little things on game day. “We have underperformed,” Davis said.
"I think the message I would give to our fan base is we know we haven't been good enough. We haven't put something on the field that the city should be proud of. That's why we're locked in and we are working.
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What I need the city to understand is we've got the right coaches, we've got the right pieces, we've got the right offense, we've got the right quarterback, we've got the right defense. It's on us to go out and execute.” It’s on Allen to make sure they do just that.
All the attention to detail that separates the fine line between winning and losing in the NFL are on his shoulders. It’s a career-defining season for him, even if he doesn’t necessarily see it that way. “I don’t try to think about or worry about, ‘Oh, what can happen if?’,” Allen said.
“Every day I’ve come into work since I’ve been a coach, I’ve come in to try to do the best I can to help the team win.” His players know just how crucial this season is, though. “Everybody’s job is always on the line, in all reality,” said tight end Juwan Johnson.
“If we aren’t doing our job, they are going to try to find a way to push you out. We know what’s at stake for ourselves, for him, for the organization. If we don’t win, another year of not making it to the playoffs, that would be four years, which is a long time.
That’s foreign to the Saints. We’re not the Aints. That’s not our reputation.
This city is used to winning and we haven’t won in a long time. So we’re just trying to change the narrative.” The only way to do that is by winning.
It’s the only way the noise will stop, although some say they don’t hear the gripes anyway. “The outside noise is outside for a reason,” guard Cesar Ruiz said. “We’re inside.
We worry about what’s in here.” What’s in the Saints’ locker room is a group of players determined to shed three years of frustration. "I know the men we have in this building and the coaches we have and the amount of work we’ve put in over the offseason and in camp, " center Erik McCoy said.
"And I’ll be damned if it’s for nothing. Every team works hard. But I feel like we worked too damn hard this offseason for it not to show up on the field.
” Allen has held players more accountable than ever before. He's put an emphasis on doing all the extra things, whether it's an extra rep in practice or an extra set in the weight room. “It’s not the same as it’s been,” Allen said earlier this summer.
“I want everybody in the building to feel that this year is different.” That will be determined by how well the Saints do. They need to be playing a game or two after the regular-season finale on Jan.
5. Those are the expectations. Tight end Foster Moreau was born and raised in New Orleans, so he understands those expectations more than most.
He grew up watching Payton and Drew Brees raise the bar in his hometown. He understands the past three seasons haven’t quite lived up to those expectations. “Obviously there is a lot of noise,” Moreau said.
“That goes back to expectations. We are a good football team with a good roster with experienced players. We need to make the playoffs.
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For us, we’re trying to win and we’re trying to win now.” Nobody needs to do that more than Allen. For him, it's now or never.
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