The bill finally came due in New Orleans on Monday, with the Saints firing head coach Dennis Allen following a seventh straight loss to fall to 2-7 on the 2024 NFL season. It's hardly a stunning turn of events, given the public admission of failure by some of the team's most established leaders, and the widespread anticipation of a third straight non-playoff season for a franchise once considered a perennial NFC power.
And yet, it begs the question: What now? For years, the Saints have ignored in both their actions and words the logical benefits of a teardown and rebuild. Allen's dismissal, while par for the course of both the team's recent struggles and Allen's personal career as a head man, suggests a new approach has finally arrived.
Let's recall first Allen's original ascent to the head-coaching gig in 2022. This was no ordinary hire. It was "safe" and intentionally un-splashy, given that Allen had spent the previous seven seasons in the building, working as Sean Payton's trusted defensive coordinator. Yet his promotion never registered as a long-term plan, with Payton notoriously "stepping away" rather than full-on retiring following the 2021 season, even publicly endorsing Allen as a "great candidate" to hold the job while he sorted out his own career.
Everything about this torch-passing suggested the Saints were committed to the status quo, effectively continuing the Payton era while Payton himself escaped the burden of uplifting an aging, expensive roster no longer anchored by an all-time quarterback in Drew Brees. And make no mistake about it: The roster was in clear decline, going from 13 wins to 12 to nine, with just a single playoff victory in between, from 2019-2021. Allen mustered just seven wins in his 2022 debut, continuing the downward trend, and yet the team doubled down on its win-now approach, paying a not-small amount of money for a "true" Brees successor in Derek Carr, who, while gutsy and experienced, came to New Orleans with precisely zero playoff wins of his own.
One and a half seasons later, the results have been predictably mediocre, with only a late-2023 push in a weak NFC South seeming to spare Allen and Carr for another ride this fall. Now that the former has been ushered off the train, it's only a matter of time before Carr bids his own farewell to New Orleans. Again, he can't be faulted for playing through pain -- and often behind ill-assembled offensive lines -- but at 33, without elite traits or production, and commanding upwards of $50 million and $60 million in the final years of his contract, it's hard to see how he fits into the picture beyond this season.
If Carr is truly expendable, of course, the same can -- and likely will -- be said about basically every veteran on this Saints roster. CBS Sports NFL insider Jonathan Jones isn't so sure New Orleans views the 2025 season as a stage for a total overhaul, but unless Saints brass pulls the ultimate double-down maneuver and seeks to pair this battered lineup with an even more established coaching candidate (e.g. Bill Belichick, Mike Vrabel) it's difficult to read Allen's dismissal as anything but an overdue admission that wholesale change has finally, reluctantly arrived -- that the Payton era can truly, mercifully be laid to rest.
That means former or current fan favorites like Jordan, Marshon Lattimore, Demario Davis, Tyrann Mathieu, etc. could all be taking some of their last snaps in Saints uniforms. And, hopefully, for the fans' sake, it could also mean that a fresh laying of infrastructure is just around the corner. Rebuilding a true contender, of course, is much easier said than done. But trying is sometimes preferable to living in the ugly middle, convincing yourself year after year that everything's going to be OK when, in fact, it is not.
