The temptation to win now (11 Viewers)

[Bill]

Here is the reality: Last Season 5-12
2025: Completely New Coaching Staff
Objective: Rebuild and Retool
Goal: Win more games than 2024
Evaluate your roster for 2026

Actually, the goal this year and every year is to win every game. Even though it won’t happen, that always needs to be the goal.
But yes, any improvement from last year would be good to see.

 

[SaintStephen1]

His 1st on the list addressed that. Injuries!
When you lose your ProBowl C in the 3rd game & eventually have to trot out the 4th string C & both 2nd, 3rd string guards for most of the season, your hopes for a winning season flies right out of the window. Both T were more than serviceable. The run game was cruising, right up until the entire center of the OL crashed like a Yugo at the Indy 500. Even then, Kamara had the best season of his career on the ground & Hill was balling until the injury. Not even Brees could make that MASH unit successful.
The team definitely needs a starting LG, the rest is just fielding decent backups, that don't crumple like tissue paper, when needed for 1 or 2 games.

Good point Tin

 

[Booker]

As was famously once said, “you play to win the game,” and I fully expect them to try to win as many games as they can in 2025. But I would like to see them show some discipline and restraint relative to the salary cap with how they build the roster.

 

[solarbear88]

Ok. What is not talked about enough is building a winning culture. Go out for a couple of years and lose lots and it becomes habit. The Bears have a talented roster on paper, but they will never win a Superbowl. Why? Winning is a mindset. We had to bring in Payton to break that losing culture in the past. DA built a losing culture of excuses and finger pointing. Go out and drop a bunch of games the next 2 years under Moore and you might lose players to this mindset. They will all be saying 'CYA in Cabo' in the middle of October.

 

[DSnfla]

The Saints were projected to win 6-7 games last year by nearly all media outlets and odds makers. They under performed those predictions at 5-12, their worst record since 2005 and the first time they finished in last place since 2008. Anyone talking about "winning" anything in 2025 is kind of dreaming. I think some are holding onto what they saw in the first two weeks of 2024 which to me were glorified preseason games since nobody had seen our offense yet and most teams starters were rusty from lack of playing meaningful snaps in the preseason. Basing anything off of those games, one being against the prior years worst team in the NFL and the other against a team just as bad as ours, is just crazy. That is going to be the truth for every year now that preseason is getting cut shorter and practices are limited. I think the truth is we weren't as good as the first two weeks and not as bad as getting shutout by the Packers. We were somewhere in between. But that still put us maybe 6-7-8 wins and third in the division.

So what's changed or is likely to change in 2025 that will have us "winning"? Are we younger and more talented? Are we deeper? Can we acquire an All Pro level player at a position of need? And what does "winning" mean? The division? A playoff game? The Super Bowl?

I don't see anything that can help us "win now" coming. We need to go all in on getting younger, more talented and deeper and maybe develop an all pro player before we should even contemplate making rash moves to reach for a Super Bowl. We can't just skip the middle steps of going from bad to better to good to good enough to win a Super Bowl.

LOL if we had just won those 1st 2 games by say a TD , yeah I could see not being optimistic. But that's not the case. You can make all the excuses you want, teams not knowing our O , rusty starters, the full moon. Just as I can say if it were not for 3 of our DBs running into each other and a DPI we would have been 4-0.

What you always seem to truly gloss over in that judging the team by the 5-12 record are the INCREDIBLE amount of injuries we had especially on offense. Injuries are a FACT , not an excuse. NO team ever in the history of sports has performed better when 1/2 their players are out with injuries.

Only 1 thing has to change in 2025 for this team to have a winning record
HEALTH, HEALTH HEALTH.
You want to take 2 steps backward so that MAYBE and that's a big MAYBE things fall into our lap ( franchise QB) . You know what taking 2 steps backward does ? Makes it harder for you to gain ground

 

[StudioSaint]

I don't see anything that can help us "win now" coming.

I see ways they can be competitive without taking the route of cutting Carr, but most importantly Moore and Loomis both see the team as being able to compete this year, so they obviously see something that some here aren't able to see. It makes sense, since they have a lot more information and details than anyone here.

We can't just skip the middle steps of going from bad to better to good to good enough to win a Super Bowl.

There's more than one to go through those steps. There's a whole bunch of options at each step. The team can get better while also keeping Carr as the starter for a couple of years, until they find a better QB. The Saints don't have to cut Carr to get better or for Moore to find his long term QB.

We shall soon see what options Moore chooses and how Loomis will make it happen.

 

[VolSaint]

LOL if we had just won those 1st 2 games by say a TD , yeah I could see not being optimistic. But that's not the case. You can make all the excuses you want, teams not knowing our O , rusty starters, the full moon. Just as I can say if it were not for 3 of our DBs running into each other and a DPI we would have been 4-0.

What you always seem to truly gloss over in that judging the team by the 5-12 record are the INCREDIBLE amount of injuries we had especially on offense. Injuries are a FACT , not an excuse. NO team ever in the history of sports has performed better when 1/2 their players are out with injuries.

Only 1 thing has to change in 2025 for this team to have a winning record
HEALTH, HEALTH HEALTH.
You want to take 2 steps backward so that MAYBE and that's a big MAYBE things fall into our lap ( franchise QB) . You know what taking 2 steps backward does ? Makes it harder for you to gain ground

There are always going to be things and factors that don't go right for a team. The difference between good and bad teams is there ability to overcome these challenges. By most metrics, the most injured team last year wasn't the Saints, but was actually the 15-2 Lions. Injuries sucked, sure. Dennis Allen was really bad, sure. But ever since Brees retired, we've supposedly been one thing away from winning. And while it was fair to chase it in the past, I think over the past 5 years of failure it's been made pretty clear the team has just been bad.

All ties to the past have been cut with the new coaching hires. It's a new era for the Saints. They will try and win now, of course, but they will equally consider what needs to be done to win over the next decade. So expect the staff to focus on improving more than just health.

 

[Elvis]

There are always going to be things and factors that don't go right for a team. The difference between good and bad teams is there ability to overcome these challenges. By most metrics, the most injured team last year wasn't the Saints, but was actually the 15-2 Lions. Injuries sucked, sure. Dennis Allen was really bad, sure. But ever since Brees retired, we've supposedly been one thing away from winning. And while it was fair to chase it in the past, I think over the past 5 years of failure it's been made pretty clear the team has just been bad.

All ties to the past have been cut with the new coaching hires. It's a new era for the Saints. They will try and win now, of course, but they will equally consider what needs to be done to win over the next decade. So expect the staff to focus on improving more than just health.

Yup, the Lions ended the season with 16 players on IR and that is AFTER they got a few back. 13 of those were on defense including their best player, Aidan Hutchinson. I think they were up to 21 on IR at one point and they went 15-2. Our roster is paper thin because we can't afford free agents and we've traded away our draft picks to move up to get players that didn't pan out.