It seems so recent guys, but to look at those Saints teams back then under Ditka, you wonder how we even went in Ditka's first two seasons as our HC. No direction, a HC who didn't realize the game had past him bye along time ago, and a GM that in all honesty, only hired Ditka to save him from being cast out to sea after Mora resigned in 1996. Jim Mora realized that his glory days as Saints HC were behind him by the 1994 season. He was trying to make something happen by getting Jim Everett and opening up the new offense, making us a more passing oriented team but the only problem was that it was too little too late. Jim Everett could have helped us a hell of a lot more in 1993 then coming a year later. IMO, if we had brought in Everett in instead of Wade Wilson, The Saints may have ended up better off, because unlike his predecessor, Jim Everett did have some gas left in the tank, if he had a better defense in 94, and 95, we might have been a playoff team and I'm not joking there either. The defense though was shot by the time Everett came aboard, and IMO that's a shame, if he had Sam Mills, Rickey Jackson, Vaughn Johnson, and Renaldo Turnbull, who knows what might have happened?
But the Ditka years were tough for me. I don't think I realized how badly they were until Ditka was long gone and his replacement came in, we all know about Haslett and Venturi and how they slowly turned us into a break-even team at best, but anyone can see that Haslett, at the time, was world's better then Ditka was for this team. The 2000 season was something not many people expected from this team and from the Saints franchise. It was great while it lasted that one season, but in that time, Haslett was the king of New Orleans. He and Mueller both in that one season where we struck gold and hit the big time. Then everything kind of slowly unraveled after that, but it was much better then having to endure Ditka.