The Fundamental Questions Facing the Saints Organization and Ownership

RJ in Lafayette said
Certainly since Payton's departure, and arguably even a year earlier, these are the questions that the Saints organization and ownership should have been seriously asking and urgently need to address after this season:

1. Are we a contending team--that is, are we a top 10 team that has the potential to go deep in the playoffs?

2. If we are not, are we satisfied simply in being at the present time an average team that has a legitimate chance of playing in a playoff game?

3. If we are not a top 10 NFL team and if our aspirations go beyond fielding an average team at this time, do we have in place the four organizational building blocks necessary for sustained long-term success--general manager, top personnel guy, head coach, and quarterback?

I believe that these are the questions that Gayle Benson and those around her should have been asking when Payton stepped down and again after the 2022 season, and will need to answer after this season. As a few of you know, I have been critical of Mickey Loomis and the organization since 2018 over the organization's philosophy towards the draft and building a football team and especially since Payton departed--that is, the direction the team has taken. The answers to the questions above determine the team's direction.

It appears that the organization (certainly after Payton left) concluded (a) our team can legitimately contend; or (b) though our team may not legitimately contend, we are satisfied with having an average team that playing in the NFC South can make a playoff appearance--that is, a team better, even if only marginally so, than the team we have been watching.

I think they were asking those questions. And I think the objective is to win a Super Bowl and realistically the way you go about that is to put together the best team (from front office down to ball boy) that you can. But you don't have an unlimited ability to swap out pieces with alternatives that you know will be better - there's no crystal ball and these are human beings, not computer programs, they're not completely predictable. The question was never whether Dennis Allen was a Super Bowl winning coach, the question was whether the team is better off with Dennis Allen or someone else that was reasonably within reach of hiring. The same is true for the quarterback position.

It's easy to strategize about what moves a team needs to theoretically make to get better based known performance. But that's not reality - reality is having to make those specific decisions based on actual alternatives and on unknown future performance.

When Brees retired and Payton left, the strength of this team was defense - and DA was leading that unit, and that unit was and still is the kind of unit that when paired with a competent (not great) offense can win most games. Not retaining DA as HC left him open to take the next HC offer, which would have likely been coming. I think the one glaring mistake was not going out from day 1 of the DA era and getting an established, strong OC. Beyond that, I think it's hard to expect them to base the whole next era on the strength of a defense that can go the playoffs and beyond and hitch it to a rookie QB taken in the middle of the first round.

Some of the calculations have not played out as well as they hoped. But I don't doubt for a second that they're trying to put the best team together that they can.