Saints planned to interview Mike McCarthy; McCarthy didn’t garner enough interest from Saints and will take a year off

DaveXA said
Sure, but Covid had a larger, more detrimental impact on that kind of strategy, so it hurt much worse than if a different approach had been taken.

Not right or wrong, just unlucky.

The cap went down ~$15 million. All other teams had to deal with it as well. Only one still has it as an excuse 5 years later.