Underhill article: “Saints moves are telling us what they felt the real problem with the team was last season” (20 Viewers)

[DSnfla]

Everything that comes out of a coach’s mouth is coach speak. A lot of it has truth and some of it is pandering to media. Next man up is not pandering. If you don’t believe in your players, if your teammates don’t believe in you, and if you don’t believe in yourself, then the game is not worth being played. There wouldn’t be any training camp battles for a spot. There wouldn’t be a reason to coach every player. There wouldn’t be any reason to call substitutions. Do you not remember when SP would call substitutions on darn near every snap? He believed that all of his guys would perform when their numbers were called. Are you serious right now? Tell me you have played a sport and had to depend on someone that wasn’t a starter?!?! The heck do you think we call that? Let me guess what Kirwin or Miller calls it….. “Scrub Sub”?!?! The absolute first goal is to instantly get that player mentally right and build that confidence. Football is a sport where everyone’s job is directly correlated to the person next to you. That’s why it’s the ultimate team sport. Hence, next man up.

SP would use sub packages because certain players skill set were better in certain situations. Noy because he thought " Ohh I have faith in my back up OC so let's put him in for a play or 2"

 

[DSnfla]

Our healthy LB's can't cover running backs and tight ends and our safety can't tackle and our healthy defensive lineman couldn't stop the run. On offense, if one player went down they were pulling players off the street to fill in. It was more than just injuries. You could include lack of depth at positions. The team was tied for last place in one of the worst divisions in the NFL and beat no team with a winning record. We just stunk. Period..... New coach, upcoming draft and a positive outlook moving forward is our best hope.

I think Staley's system will help with covering RBs and TEs over the middle. Reid is a very good tackler and it will help Mathieu to be more ball hawk. We just traded for one of the best run stopping DT in the league.
We were not pulling people off the street after 1 player went down on O , more like when 2 or 3 in the same position group.

We stunk mainly due to being decimated by injuries and having a poor HC that lost the team

 

[DSnfla]

This is the comment I left from that article:

I really don’t understand the perception coming from the front office. We can be competitive, but to do what?, win a playoff game?. We may be as close to Tampa as we are far from Detroit, the rams and Philly.

If we are doing a mixture of cleaning cap and roster while going for it, we should not be signing new players that are over 26 years old. We should be questioning extending veterans that will not be playing up to their cap value.

To me, we are improvising, not building towards a real competitive future.

Yup and I'll post the same response I did there
You do know there is no such thing as going from 5-12 to winning the SB , right? You have to MAKE the playoffs to WIN the SB and you have to make the playoffs 1st

 

[DSnfla]

The big takeaway from this offseason so far is that Loomis thinks he’s been right all along, which does not give me great confidence going forward. Loomis didn’t even want to get rid of DA, but GB forced his hand on that. Now, he has indicated it will be back to business as usual—reup aging vets, push money on those contracts into the future (perpetuating the cycle), insist you can win now in a weak division instead of rebuilding (although that hasn’t worked at all so far). I do see two potential reasons for hope: (1) maybe Moore can draft better than DA (which we will just have to wait and see on); and (2) maybe Moore can coach better than DA (which I think is probable).

Please stop with the ML didn't want to get rid of DA. It has been reported by more than one person that covers the Saints that ML did not want to fire DA MID-SEASON . And they also said that they believed that he would have fired DA at the end of the season

 

[DSnfla]

If they just thought it was injuries then why dd they fire DA?

No one is saying they thought it was JUST injuries. And most think that DA would have been fired at the end of the season. I'm guessing a lot would have been how he handled the team with all the injuries. He was not a strong enough HC to keep them focused and motivated. SP had a ton of injuries his last yr and still managed to not lose the team

 

[DSnfla]

It would seem reasonable to me that the Saints could be competitive and do more building for the future through the draft simultaneously by trading back to mid 1st round pickup some extra picks. I just dont see a 2025 championship run using free agency with other teams castoffs apart from one or two signings.

Why does it have to be a championship run for it to be a successful season?
What is a championship run? Make it to the NFCCG? The divisional rd ?

Of course the goal is the SB every yr, but if we get in better shape cap wise. sign some under 30 promising FAs and get 2 quality starters and 2 contributors in the draft, win 10 games and maybe the NFCS I would consider that to be a promising start to being in contention for a SB in 26 and 27, A success is what I'd say

 

[DSnfla]

I think this is an absolutely tone deaf argument.....the team had quit on DA, do you realize how ugly those last games would have been? Gayle was not going to find out and she was right in that regard......

I've never believed in sacrificing wins for draft position, arguably the best draft in Saints history we were picking 11th....

And with regards to the article I'm not totally surprised that they are retaining many of the vets because financially it probably makes sense to do so, the main thing with this first year of CKM and staff is the draft.....we need cheap young starters and depth....

I don't believe in losing games for a better pick as well , but there is reality. and if we lost by 2pts or 14 it's still a loss and it's over now

 

[DSnfla]

I don't assume players over 26 can't live up to their cap number.

What I am saying is that if are focusing mid and long term, we should concentrate on players around 26 years old.

I would not be signing or extending players that will not justify their salary by their play. We all love Cam and Taysom and Demario but their current salary reflect more what they have done than what they will do on the future.

I have different priorities than Loomis right now.

We may be close to win the division, but we are not even close to compete for a Super Bowl.

My main focus should be latter, and in order to do so, I would rejuvenate the team, thinking on having a players reaching their prime at the time we will be able to compete for a championship, and that won't happen in 2025 or 2026.

Last time I checked you have to either make the playoffs or win the division to get to the SB , Right?

 

[DSnfla]

Eagles lost more important pieces that game and still won, but hey, who am I to make sense?!?!

We had every chance to win that game. No excuses

So you're saying that the Eagles were a better team than us last yr ?? DUH

 

[DSnfla]

Exactly. Like I said, after our 2-0 start, our team started making the same mistakes as the previous two years. Thats why I’m not sure we would’ve won more than 7 or 8 games. It was frustrating to watch. I also said that losing became infectious. 2 games to start a season doesn’t automatically cure that. It’s something that need to be rid of over the course of time.

So in the Philly game we drive down and score on the 1st drive. We lose McCoy and Ruiz in that 1st drive . Losing them had no bearing in the outcome of the game that we lose by 3 pts ?
Against Atl. no TH no McCoy no Ruiz and we lose by 2pts. Again no bearing on the outcome of the game?

 

[DSnfla]

They lost their receivers. Had to rely on their TE who killed us. They lost a third player but i forgot who it was

They didn't have Brown or the starting OC and they lost Smith but not until late 3rd qtr. But they knew that Brown and the OC were not playing before the game so they made adjustments in the wk. When a team loses their starting OC in game they lose 70% of the time

 

[DSnfla]

There really was zero excuse for the offense falling apart with the McCoy injury alone. Yes, Carter is a monster, but you have to have a plan if McCoy goes down whether that's just a better backup or a tweak to the blocking scheme. And, it got worse when Ruiz went down which is also inexcusable from both a lack of depth and lack of ability to tweak the blocking to at least make it adequate. I might forgive it if it was just in the games where each went down, but it went on for weeks without anything done to help it. They did not go to a short passing game or do any of the many things that a good staff should be able to do. Maybe it was that the depth really sucked that bad, but I find it hard to believe they didn't at least have serviceable guys to step in with the right plan. And if they didn't it's an even more obvious flaw in the building of the team.

Hopefully they fix those depth issues this year

I do get that it's a lot of injuries to deal with concentrated on the OL and at WR, and it made it impossible to be a good offense or even an average offense, but I still think they should have done better and they clearly should have had better depth to at least still put an NFL offense on the field. What we put on the field at that point just wasn't an NFL offense and it wasn't fair to throw Rattler out there with that group and expect him to win or even look okay.

But if those gus stay healthy this year, or even if more of them stay healthy this year, I think we see a better looking offense on the field this year. But, we need to add a starting LG, some more depth on the IOL, a true X WR, and a complete TE that can also do work in the passing game.

Mike D is quoted as saying that if a team loses it's C in-game they lose 70% of the time, So it's not just a Saints thing

 

[StudioSaint]

The problem I have is that the folks on Airline tellling us we have a good roster are the same people who insisted that we had a great coaching staff under DA.

If the new staff is OK with the hand they've been dealt, that makes me feel better, for sure. But I put zero faith in what the front office says or believes any more.

Moore and his coaching staff are the ones saying the roster isn't as bad as last year indicated. They were not with the Saints last year. They never said that the Saints had a great coaching staff under Allen.

 

[Domeination]

Please stop with the ML didn't want to get rid of DA. It has been reported by more than one person that covers the Saints that ML did not want to fire DA MID-SEASON . And they also said that they believed that he would have fired DA at the end of the season

Sorry, but despite your “well reported” claim that ML was going to fire DA at the end of the season, there are credible reports to the contrary, such as this one:

Dennis Allen details what happened the day he was fired

Former New Orleans Saints head coach Dennis Allen joined Jay Glazer on Glazer's 'Unbreakable' podcast, where Allen reflected on the day he was informed he was being relieved of his duties. The most interesting tidbit of the story was Allen mentioned Mickey Loomis "

sports.yahoo.com

The reporting right after DA was fired makes his account that it was against Loomis’s wishes completely credible:

Report: Benson led decision to fire Allen

By Ross Jackson The New Orleans Saints made some major changes this past week, headlined by firing their former head coach Dennis Allen. The decision was the right one to make considering the team’s downward spiral. While many point to the team's seven-game losing streak as a driving factor...

www.louisianasports.net

 

[SoggyBottomBoy]

3 of those 7 games in the losing streak was winnable, despite injuries. That HC was finding historical ways to lose. Does anyone not remember this? It was major headlines!!! 3 one score games. All 3 of those games we lost by three points or less. Why are we blaming injuries again? Our team was just not good. Good teams finds ways to win. DA has proved that he couldn’t get his team to seize the moment. Pulling out one score games, especially 3 points or less, instills confidence in a team. Once a team drops easily winnable games, doubts start to creep in. It was already in the back of their minds from previous years. Injuries is just an excuse. We had opportunities to win games.

Friend, I think we’re more in agreement than disagreement. Yes, I remember those close, winnable games. I also remember those two freakish wins to start the season. I have measured opinions about them, but a bad team could not roll those two teams like we did. The Eagles game followed and we should have won that one, too, even as our o-line was being destroyed. The McCoy injury was more significant than I’d have imagined, but in hindsight that Eagles D-line destroyed the mighty Fighting Mahomeses so we may not have been that bad. Another huge factor in that game was the loss of Taysom. He really did cover for a lot of our weaknesses and our O-line was overall weak even when healthy.

Where we differ on opinion is the injury “excuses” vs “factors”. A certain degree of injuries is to be expected. What we had was insane, especially on offense. Good teams would have been better at dealing with it, but I’ll bring up the Super Bowl Niners stout roster could not.

On defense that sharp decline was more on coaching as they were reasonably healthy.

And why are you bashing DA? I thought you really liked him. Weren’t you always referring to him as “Dear”?