In Your Opinion, Why Should the Saints Steer Away from the Payton Coaching Tree?
There’s a lot to say about this.
1) Jim Haslett also took a 3-13 team to 10 wins
2) Everybody involved says that both turnarounds were smoke & mirrors (Haslett knocked off the defending Super Bowl champs, Payton beat a team he already had a regular season victory against after a bye week, which [see note 3])
2a) the team immediately regressed to a losing record and a last-place finish in the division the following two seasons before putting it all together in ‘09
2a-i) Haslett also backslid in year 2
3) from 2002-2019, the 4-division 6-team playoff era, no 10-win team had ever been a 2-seed in the conference playoffs except the 2006 Saints, and even that needed a head-to-head tiebreaker to be possible
3a) the Saints clinched the NFC South despite losing the week they clinched
3a-i) the entire NFC was so uniquely putrid in 2006, Rex Grossman was the Super Bowl QB for the conference. His AFC counterpart was Peyton Manning.
I say all this to say, just playing the results and ignoring all context sets up disappointment and discontent. “Why can’t New Coach meet tHe sTaNDaRdS of the old coach?”
i can't disagree with much you said here. and I had honestly forgotten about Haslett, but yeah....he did it too. But you read way more into my post than intended...I certainly didn't mean to ask (nor imply) "why can't New Coach meet standards of the old coach?"
In my previous post, I was responding to a guy who thinks the Saints won't be relevant for several more years, no matter who the coach is. In all fairness to that guy, he MAY be right. I was simply pointing out that the right coach (CSP, and now Haslett) can indeed provide a +7 game swing in the win column. If we found that guy again, the Saints MAY be a 12-13 win team next season. I don't think that's likely, but it is possible, and your Haslett example means it isn't isolated to potential future HOF coaches.
I was simply trying to identify what I think it will reasonably take to make the playoffs (10 wins seems to be pretty reliable....perhaps 9 under the right circumstances, with the right combination of tie-breakers). And the differential from where the Saints are in 2024 (likely a 6-win team, IMO) versus a playoff team is only +4 games. With the right HC hire, that is absolutely do-able in year 1, IMO. I think it was do-able with THIS roster, THIS year, with the right HC; even with all the adversity experienced. If the past 5 games can be extrapolated, I think a full season of Rizzi would have yielded 10 wins and playoffs.
Regardless of what IS, what could have been is just conjecture on my part. And I guess "relevance" needs to be defined, because "making playoffs" and "challenging for Superbowls" are 2 different levels of relevance, IMO. My point was simply to illustrate that a sad-sack Saints team vaulted into playoff relevance before (2x) in ONE season, and that it is certainly do-able again. But it's probably 2-3 seasons before they are relevant as "challenging for Superbowls" again, so I probably should've asked that fella before I posted. Maybe we actually agree? Even so, Step 1 is to find the RIGHT coach this offseason. Step 2 will be to make the playoffs. And I firmly believe that if Step 1 is successful, Step 2 will follow as a result. That is ALL I am saying, nothing more. JMO...