Sean Payton is a great coach and a good talent evaluator. His teams play better than the talent they have and that's about the best thing you can say about a coach. And frankly, that last 9-8 year may have been his best coaching job given the roster and all the injuries they had.
But, it's also true that he left here leaving the team with no QB, no WRs, no cap space, and a large number of older players because he went all in every year trying to get another Super Bowl and traded away draft picks to get guys he thought were the last piece to win it all. The result is an aging roster, with little depth, and no cap space. I don't blame him for those things and we had a lot of success as a result, but it also resulted in him leaving when he realized the situation we were in.
It was a mistake to hire DA to replace him. I was a mistake not to go full force into the rebuild the year after Payton left. And it was a mistake to tell the fanbase that DA was a continuation of the success that Payton had. But, it would also be a mistake to not realize that Payton is part of the reason we are in the position we are in.