Underhill article: “Saints moves are telling us what they felt the real problem with the team was last season”

[fishing4food]

Our healthy LB's can't cover running backs and tight ends and our safety can't tackle and our healthy defensive lineman couldn't stop the run. On offense, if one player went down they were pulling players off the street to fill in. It was more than just injuries. You could include lack of depth at positions. The team was tied for last place in one of the worst divisions in the NFL and beat no team with a winning record. We just stunk. Period..... New coach, upcoming draft and a positive outlook moving forward is our best hope.

 

[Boy_of_wonder75]

I think people are overlooking when the injuries occurred and how many were concurrent. There were some games when we were playing with fewer than 30% of the starting offense. Every team has injuries, certainly, but does every team have them to one position group at the same time?

 

[SweetT]

Losing our starting qb and not having a legit backup tanked the season.

It was DA’s decision to not sign a seasoned veteran QB as a backup. Many teams make sure they have a veteran backup. We didn’t have to roll with Jazzy J and Rattler. Could’ve just kept one.

 

[Optimistic Ozzy]

It was DA’s decision to not sign a seasoned veteran QB as a backup. Many teams make sure they have a veteran backup. We didn’t have to roll with Jazzy J and Rattler. Could’ve just kept one.

I agree, but with that offensive line and no receivers, not sure what good a vet would do.

 

[RJ in Lafayette]

That the organization is still trying to reload rather than rebuild is disappointing but hardly surprising.

Yes, injuries can affect even really good teams like the Saints in 2018, and injuries adversely affected the Saints in 2024. But injuries are part of the game, and in 2024, injuries underscored that we have no depth.

At present, our over-under win number for 2025 is 6.5. With a good draft and better coaching, it could be a win too low in a mediocre division. But I would suggest that reality is that we lack our quarterback of the future; we have few red-chip (top five at their position) or blue-chip (top 10 at their position) players; we have few foundation players under 30; we have terrible depth; and we will still have for the next two years (and likely for a longer period) a horrible salary-cap position relative to that of most of the other teams in the league (which means in free agency not that we can't sign some players, but that we can't sign some of the players we would really like to sign and can't sign as many players as other teams).

I have no position on our new coaching staff--Moore was not my top choice because of concerns over his personality. But I recognize that I did not interview or study the top candidates the way those conducting the coaching staff did and that NFL history shows that not every highly successful head coach has the personality of Vince Lombardi. I am willing to give Moore a chance.

My concern is that Loomis, who must be approaching 70, remains at the top of the organizational pyramid. We can agree to disagree, and no one on this forum has the contacts inside the NFL to show that his position is right. But my sense is that those inside the league--the other general managers and their assistants, and the top personnel people and coaches--do not see Mickey Loomis as an upper-tier general manager or team executive like Howie Roseman, Mark Murphy, Brian Gutekunst, Brad Holmes, Les Snead, John Lynch, Brandon Beane, Eric DeCosta, Brett Veach, John Schneider, and I would add Nick Caserio and Kwesi Adofo-Mensah. In fact, I believe a survey of league "insiders" would currently put Loomis in the bottom half of general managers--and a number would put him in the bottom quarter because of philosophical differences over how Loomis has constantly traded away draft picks and managed the salary cap over the years.

I know there are some (though now probably a minority) who disagree even strongly with my analysis. But hopefully we can all agree on this: Winning and losing in the NFL begins at the very top of the organization, and there is no more important question in professional football than whether the organization has the right management in place.

 

[Vision]

Playing hypothetical of what kind of team we would’ve been, without injuries is a guess kind of stat as well

500 team with DA.

 

[Rexman100]

I don’t buy into the injuries excuse. It’s cool to say it, as a coping mechanism, but 4 out of the top 10 teams that lost the most points due to injuries, made the playoffs (Lions, Bucs, Steelers, and Texans). The main thing, when deciding if a team is good or not, is the depth chart. If your depth chart is underwhelming, then you are not a good team…….you are just a top heavy team. If you can’t build a competent roster, where guys can fill in, due to injuries, then you are lacking at assembling a roster. Good/great teams overcome obstacles. However, if I were to play the “injuries” game, then I would say we were going to be nothing more than an average team bc that was the ceiling that coach showed was his best. I only go by what facts have presented

Nah. The real problem is that they we were just one year into Klint Kubiaks system. A system that required a completely different type of Oline man. If we were in year three of KKs system we would’ve had three full drafts to fortify our roster, especially the o line. I agree that we are top heavy like every NFL team, but we are more top heavy due to the new system. I had said many times that Kks system chews up Olineman and RBs. And it sure did. We simply didn’t t have the Oline depth, especially at center, a position that we didn’t have a single backup penciled in.

 

[webster]

It was DA’s decision to not sign a seasoned veteran QB as a backup. Many teams make sure they have a veteran backup. We didn’t have to roll with Jazzy J and Rattler. Could’ve just kept one.

That decision by DA was his nail in the coffin. Who goes into a season without a backup qb on the roster?

 

[Randy Jones]

At the beginning of the season 24, the starting OL, skill positions and the defense were competitive. It was the backups that I believe were subpar particularly on the OL. Herron and Lemieux were walking wounded for instance. This should be an emphasis for the draft.

 

[Rexman100]

Defense didn’t have that many injuries and couldn’t tackle to save their lives.

The Dc / HC was fired. The d took a nosedive afterwards.

 

[Rexman100]

Allen was a terrible head coach, and I don't think that's a subject of debate at this point. The injury claim is just lame, but it does point to a lack of depth and weaknesses with FO. All teams deal with injuries, but good coaches can keep things stable or cover up deficiencies until they face a superior team. The Lions did this for half their season, and the Rams gave Philly their closest game after battling injuries through the year.

One offseason wasn’t enough time to fortify Klint Kubiaks system. For that system to work, you need to be two D at every OLine position. And the third string must be able to play multiple positions.

 

[guillermo]

This is the comment I left from that article:

I really don’t understand the perception coming from the front office. We can be competitive, but to do what?, win a playoff game?. We may be as close to Tampa as we are far from Detroit, the rams and Philly.

If we are doing a mixture of cleaning cap and roster while going for it, we should not be signing new players that are over 26 years old. We should be questioning extending veterans that will not be playing up to their cap value.

To me, we are improvising, not building towards a real competitive future.

 

[Domeination]

The big takeaway from this offseason so far is that Loomis thinks he’s been right all along, which does not give me great confidence going forward. Loomis didn’t even want to get rid of DA, but GB forced his hand on that. Now, he has indicated it will be back to business as usual—reup aging vets, push money on those contracts into the future (perpetuating the cycle), insist you can win now in a weak division instead of rebuilding (although that hasn’t worked at all so far). I do see two potential reasons for hope: (1) maybe Moore can draft better than DA (which we will just have to wait and see on); and (2) maybe Moore can coach better than DA (which I think is probable).

 

[Rexman100]

If they just thought it was injuries then why dd they fire DA?

Thats a good question. And the answer is to maintain fan optimism (ticket sales) by creating a false sense of hope that “next year is the year” Firing DA and hiring a completely new staff creates provides a sense of hope. But It’s mostly false, because you’re only as good as your roster.