Underhill article: “Saints moves are telling us what they felt the real problem with the team was last season”

That the organization is still trying to reload rather than rebuild is disappointing but hardly surprising.

Yes, injuries can affect even really good teams like the Saints in 2018, and injuries adversely affected the Saints in 2024. But injuries are part of the game, and in 2024, injuries underscored that we have no depth.

At present, our over-under win number for 2025 is 6.5. With a good draft and better coaching, it could be a win too low in a mediocre division. But I would suggest that reality is that we lack our quarterback of the future; we have few red-chip (top five at their position) or blue-chip (top 10 at their position) players; we have few foundation players under 30; we have terrible depth; and we will still have for the next two years (and likely for a longer period) a horrible salary-cap position relative to that of most of the other teams in the league (which means in free agency not that we can't sign some players, but that we can't sign some of the players we would really like to sign and can't sign as many players as other teams).

I have no position on our new coaching staff--Moore was not my top choice because of concerns over his personality. But I recognize that I did not interview or study the top candidates the way those conducting the coaching staff did and that NFL history shows that not every highly successful head coach has the personality of Vince Lombardi. I am willing to give Moore a chance.

My concern is that Loomis, who must be approaching 70, remains at the top of the organizational pyramid. We can agree to disagree, and no one on this forum has the contacts inside the NFL to show that his position is right. But my sense is that those inside the league--the other general managers and their assistants, and the top personnel people and coaches--do not see Mickey Loomis as an upper-tier general manager or team executive like Howie Roseman, Mark Murphy, Brian Gutekunst, Brad Holmes, Les Snead, John Lynch, Brandon Beane, Eric DeCosta, Brett Veach, John Schneider, and I would add Nick Caserio and Kwesi Adofo-Mensah. In fact, I believe a survey of league "insiders" would currently put Loomis in the bottom half of general managers--and a number would put him in the bottom quarter because of philosophical differences over how Loomis has constantly traded away draft picks and managed the salary cap over the years.

I know there are some (though now probably a minority) who disagree even strongly with my analysis. But hopefully we can all agree on this: Winning and losing in the NFL begins at the very top of the organization, and there is no more important question in professional football than whether the organization has the right management in place.