Congratulations, you've just been hired as the New Orleans Saints head coach. What are you going to do?

Clean house on the defensive side of the ball to sever all close connections to Allen. Bring in new coordinators and coaches, and release Jordan, Mathieu, and Davis. Bring in Granderson, Bresee, and Werner and tell them it’s defensive team captain or bust for them, we need new leadership to help navigate what will be a rough year. The Payton era is over, the Allen years tried to drag it out, but now it’s time to start anew in the Rouxble era.

Of course, to release those defensive players means we need to restructure Carr, so keep the offensive staff intact in 2025 to maximize his output. Tell the staff that 2025 is a tryout to be on the staff in 2026 and beyond, because I only have three years at most and Carr is on a one year tryout along with them. We’ll try to bring in another playmaker and guard via FA and the draft, but the defense will likely get the lion’s share of the resources to rebuild a defense that can complement Kubiak’s run first offense. Remind the team of what we accomplished to start 2024 with what we had, and look at 2025 as a chance to build on that foundation with (hopefully) better health across the unit.

Camp will feature a competition for the vacated spots on defense, both for captains and for starters at key positions (LDE, MLB, S). With few large cap commitments on defense, the best players that we have will play on Sundays. Anyone that doesn’t want to leave it all on the field each week will keep the bench warm if they even manage to make the roster. On offense, Carr will be named the starter, but give Rattler meaningful first team reps because we can’t afford a veteran backup. Rattler will have a chance to compete for QB1 in 2026 if Carr stumbles in 2025, and hopefully we’ll have enough hits on our defensive picks/signings in 2025 to allow us to use our resources in 2026 to build around the QB that wins the job.

Everything beyond that depends on how the 2025 season goes. I might even get fired after one year if Benson starts reading the SSF after a loss.