I wasn't high on Watson but a lot of fans were very much on board and despite his off-field issues, the consensus around the league was that on the field he was a young QB that proved he could play at high level for a Texans franchise that's never really got off the ground and some would call dysfunctional. His play for the Browns (another largely dysfunctional franchise if we're being honest) hasn't been too great from what I've seen but at the time he was seen as the best available QB and we were in the conversation for him. I don't really hold that against Loomis.
Derek Carr is on Loomis because he hired DA and let DA go get his guy so that's fair to assign some blame to him for that, he did build an out after 2 years into the contract though. Unfortunately for most of us 11 games have been enough.
Hiring Dennis Allen after Payton decided to "retire" was a bad decision in hindsight but I don't think Mickey or Gayle really expected Sean to walk away and by that point Loomis decided continuity was the way to go after an injury plagued previous year. We followed that up with another injury plagued year that gave DA a mulligan, rightly or wrongly (and it sure looks wrongly at the moment).
Carmichael I agree should've been let go the second he said he didn't really want the job (and perhaps the whole continuity idea should've been scrapped at that moment but by then the other candidates were probably off the table). That one I will give you. On the other side of that though, he's allowing his coach to choose his staff. Most coaches want to have that power in an organization. The problem with that comes when the coach refuses to acknowledge the problem and fire his friends, something we saw with Sean for the first half or so of his time here. Sean eventually realized that if he wanted to turn the corner he had to hire someone more qualified to run the defense and let them handle the hiring on that side of the ball, while he focuses on what he does best. Unfortunately for DA and us, I don't think he has that in him. He seems to want to be liked too much. Payton's got friends obviously, but I don't think he really cares if too many people like him, at least not from a coaching/boss standpoint. So sure we can blame Loomis for not going over DAs head, but there's every chance that narrative gets spun into "Mickey Loomis is the kind of GM that doesn't let his coaches stand on their own choices". That's not necessarily a very attractive trait for a GM to have.
I don't really think we got fleeced on either trade in hindsight. Olave's a great young receiver and with a better QB/OC would likely be lighting it up more often than he already does. He's got some things to work on with focus sure but other than that the only thing he really lacks is size. The CGJ trade looked bad last season but after a great year with the Eagles they too decided to let him walk and he only got a prove it deal with Detroit then got hurt. That tells me that he's got a bad reputation around the league for whatever reason.
If the good drafts are on Ireland, I'm going to say the bad drafts are on Ireland. I'm sure DA has plenty of input there too because that's what we did with Payton, and they've always talked about continuity.
I don't mind the Saints showing a bit of loyalty to a long time player like Cam Jordan, or a fan favorite and team leader like Demario Davis though I understand not everyone feels that way. The other two are fair enough but for me Ruiz has been one of our better lineman this year (not saying much I realize that). Johnson has been under-utlized like the rest of the TEs in the passing game, but sure if Loomis knew that was the plan then it was a bad decision.