Category: Former Saints

Two former Saints in the running for Defensive Player of the Year

Zack Baun is getting Luke Kuechly comparisons. Trey Hendrickson led the league in sacks. The Saints let two DPOY finalists walk out the door in free agency:

Zack Baun and Trey Hendrickson making first-team All Pro was a great reminder of the talent the New Orleans Saints let walk out of the building. As if that wasn’t enough, both men are also finalists for Defensive Player of the Year.

In a season, where there wasn’t a defensive player, or players, who clearly stood over the rest of the pack, this award seems up in the air.

Baun winning the award feels like a long shot due to his position. He was great in his first year with the Philadelphia Eagles, but Luke Kuechly was the last linebacker to win this award over a decade ago.

Ironically, Baun’s 2024 is very similar to Kuechly’s DPOY season in 2013. Kuechly also endorsed Baun as the player he’d pick to win the award this year on the Rich Eisen Show.

Hendrickson registered 17.5 sacks for the second season. This year it was good enough to lead the NFL in sacks. He also registered 19 tackles for a loss. Hendrickson earned his first first-team All Pro, and his stats give him a good chance of being Defensive Player of the Year for the first time as well.

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Former Saints RB Reggie Bush reveals who he would pick as NFL MVP

Former Saints running back Reggie Bush revealed who he would choose as the next NFL Most Valuable Player, and they aren’t a quarterback:

Former Saints running back Reggie Bush has his own opinions on who should be the next NFL MVP, something that has been a subject of controversy.

The primary players being considered are Baltimore Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson, Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen and Philadelphia Eagles running back Saquon Barkley. Also in consideration are quarterbacks Joe Burrow (Cincinnati Bengals) and Jared Goff (Detroit Lions).

Perhaps controversially, Bush said he would eliminate another famous Louisiana name from the race. That is former LSU quarterback Burrow, who is up against the fact that the Bengals did not make the postseason.

“I would also put Lamar Jackson in there. I’m sorry, I have to take Joe Burrow out,” Bush said in an interview with Responsible Gambler. “If you don’t make the playoffs bro, you don’t get in this MVP conversation.”

Some would not take that comment kindly, considering that Burrow’s offensive line and the better part of his supporting cast failed him all season long.

Burrow himself was one of the league’s most successful passers, leading in multiple categories as he ended his season with a 70.6% completion rate, passing for 4,918 yards with 43 touchdowns and nine interceptions.

But, in a way, Bush does have a point in that it is very rare that a player who does not make the playoffs is ultimately named an MVP.

Bush is putting his money on Barkley, who has continued to thrive in the postseason.

“I’m going to go with Saquon. 2,000 yards is hard as hell, especially in this era right now in football where teams are just not running the football as much like that anymore,” Bush explained. “I love seeing the Eagles get back to that run game because I think that’s so important.”

It will be interesting to see how things ultimately shake out as the winner of the honor is set to be revealed on Feb. 6.

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It won’t be long before Aaron Glenn returns to New Orleans, but with a new team

It won’t be long before Aaron Glenn returns to New Orleans, but with a new team. He’ll be leading the Jets when they visit the Caesars Superdome in 2025:

Sean Payton returned to the Caesars Superdome in 2024 and left with a win. Will Aaron Glenn square off with his old New Orleans Saints teammates and lead to the New York Jets in 2025? We’re going to find out.

Glenn picked the Jets head coaching job over the Saints this week, but it won’t be long before he’s back in the city. The Jets were already scheduled to visit the Saints at the Superdome during the upcoming season. All we’ve got left to find out is when that game will be played.

The Saints have beaten the Jets in each of their last two meetings, both in New Orleans (in 2017) and in New York (in 2021). It’s a new day for Gang Green, but the Jets are 10-24 on the road since the 2021 season. The Saints aren’t much better at home during that span with a 15-19 record.

There will be a lot of questions surrounding both teams involved with this matchup; we don’t know who the Saints head coach will be or who the Jets will have at quarterback, or in his headset calling plays, given Glenn’s defensive background. Both squads went 5-12 this past season but Glenn clearly felt the Jets were a better opportunity for him. It’s just one game, but you have to imagine it would be gratifying for general manager Mickey Loomis to see his team get a win over Glenn’s Jets head-to-head. We’ll just have to wait and see if he can build a team that can accomplish that, and whether it ends up being actually meaningful in the end.

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Saints miss on top coaching target before getting a second interview

The New Orleans Saints won’t get a shot at Aaron Glenn. He’ll be the new head coach of the New York Jets:

When the New York Jets got the first in-person interview with Aaron Glenn, it spelled bad news for the New Orleans Saints. There’s no rule saying coaches have to sit down with multiple teams, so taking the Jets interview first displayed a clear priority.

Tuesday morning, NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport reported the Jets correctly intended to not allow Glenn to leave the building without a deal. Therein lies the pitfall of being the second interview. Your guy may never even hear you out. And that’s what happened. ESPN’s Adam Schefter reports that Glenn has accepted the Jets’ offer, which Rapoport confirmed; Rapoport added that Glenn thanked the Saints for their interest, but he’s on to New York.

It’s difficult to blame Glenn. The one advantage the Saints have over the Jets was the path to success, but the Jets provided a better set of weapons offensively and multiple building blocks. They also have youth stacked in a way New Orleans doesn’t. The cherry on top is he gets to go into this journey with a new general manager as well. Lance Newmark, who he worked with in Detroit, interviewed alongside him with the Jets and is the favorite to get that job.

History with New Orleans is the reason many paired Glenn and the Saints, but the Jets had that same card in their hand. If you cancel that out, the Jets look more attractive for a few reasons.

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Report: Ex-Saints head coach could team up with Ben Johnson on Bears

ESPN reports ex-New Orleans Saints head coach Dennis Allen could team up with new Chicago Bears coach Ben Johnson:

Things are picking up in the NFL coaching carousel — Detroit Lions offensive coordinator Ben Johnson is going to the Chicago Bears, and ESPN’s Adam Schefter reports that ex-New Orleans Saints head coach Dennis Allen is “the leading candidate” to join him as defensive coordinator.

Allen previously interviewed with the Indianapolis Colts for the same position, but they reportedly went with longtime Cincinnati Bengals defensive coordinator Lou Anarumo instead. That frees up Allen to join Johnson in Chicago.

And wouldn’t you know it, but the Saints have a road game with the Bears scheduled for 2025. So they could see Allen patrolling the opposing sideline as soon as this fall if he gets this job.

He’s a tough out as a defensive play caller. That was always Allen’s best fit with the Saints, and even if the biggest critics of his shortcomings as a head coach would have to agree he knows how to run a defense when that’s his sole focus.

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Lions coach Dan Campbell ‘prepared to lose both’ coordinators this year

Dan Campbell is preparing for the loss of Aaron Glenn and Ben Johnson. It could all happen quickly. Will the Saints be involved?

New Orleans Saints head coaching target Aaron Glenn has expressed the comfort of returning to the Detroit Lions if it came to that. But his head coach, Dan Campbell, surely doesn’t seem to see that happening.

Campbell told media, he’s “prepared to lose both” Glenn and offensive coordinator Ben Johnson this offseason. This mindset likely stems from two things: Campbell has high belief in both of his coordinators, and he’s had conversations with both of them after their interviews.

Campbell’s belief in his coordinators has been validated by what the Lions have built over the last couple of years. He says “they’re one of the major reasons we’ve been able to get to where we’ve been,” and it’ll hurt to lose them.

As for conversations Campbell may have had with his coordinators, this likely means he knows Glenn and Johnson have specific jobs they would take if offered. Focusing on Glenn, the main landing spots have been New Orleans and the New York Jets.

If those are truly his top two jobs and they both have him as their top candidate, the Saints have to have a 50% chance of landing their guy.

Campbell’s statement echoes reporting from ESPN’s Adam Schefter, who believes this could all be resolved by the end of the week. Schefter called Glenn and Johnson, “the dominos that have to fall before other head coaches start to get hired.” He expects that to begin this week. Maybe Glenn ends up in New Orleans to get that movement going.

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Saints schedule second, in-person interview with popular head coach candidate

The New Orleans Saints have scheduled a second, in-person head coach interview with Aaron Glenn. But a rival suitor will speak with him first:

With an early exit for the Detroit Lions in this year’s playoffs, one of the New Orleans Saints top candidates will be getting a second look a little earlier than expected.

Aaron Glenn, former Saints secondary coach and Lions defensive coordinator will be visiting New Orleans on Wednesday of this week. Glenn has already met with the team virtually during the Lions bye week but will now get an opportunity for an in-person visit his second time around.

Glenn is also set to complete an in-person, second interview with the New York Jets as well, the team who drafted him third overall in 1994. The Jets will likely be the Saints greatest competition in terms of the familiarity as well as the emotional ties to the organization. The Saints do also have similar ties to Glenn in this way as he spent the majority of his coaching career in New Orleans while also spending some time there as a player.

We should now expect things to ramp up pretty quickly with some of the league’s key candidates fully available. Stay tuned for more news and updates throughout the course of this week.

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Former Saints QB shares his prediction for who will be head coach in 2025

Former Saints quarterback Chase Daniel shared his prediction for who will be head coach in 2025. Does he have an inside track on their thinking?

Does Chase Daniel have an inside track on the New Orleans Saints head coach search? The longtime NFL backup has found success as a media analyst and commenter after hanging up his cleats, and Drew Brees’ old handshake partner shared his predictions for which candidates will take which jobs in this year’s cycle.

And he doesn’t have Aaron Glenn, Kellen Moore, Mike McCarthy or Kliff Kingsbury going to New Orleans. Instead of those A-listers, it’s New York Giants offensive coordinator Mike Kafka who Daniel sees wearing in black and gold.

Kafka is visiting the Saints this week for a second, in-person interview. What’s interesting is that his time with the Giants isn’t really the selling-point for him. It’s his past experience coaching quarterbacks under Andy Reid on the Kansas City Chiefs that’s most appealing. Interestingly, Daniel previously noted that Kafka wasn’t running Reid’s playbook under Giants head coach Brian Daboll, and that it was clear he “definitely isn’t a part of the conversations” surrounding the team’s draft strategy at last year’s combine.

So it sounds like Kafka made a bad bet in going from Kansas City to New York, and wound up stuck in a dead-end job under Daboll. Half the teams with job openings are competing for time with him during this hiring cycle and he’ll be in a prominent role at the Senior Bowl, so he’s clearly highly regarded around the league. Maybe a move to New Orleans with more opportunities to make decisions and run his own offense could be good for him.

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Saints’ head orthopedic surgeon headed to different NFL team

WDSU New Orleans reports that the Saints’ head team orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Karim Meijer, is leaving to join Sean Payton on the Denver Broncos:

The New Orleans Saints are moving into a new era this offseason with a multitude of changes that could bring both positives and negatives.

But one of the things happening off of the field is that Saints orthopedic surgeon Dr. Karim Meijer, who is regarded as of the top figures in his profession, is leaving the Saints.

And he is headed to the Denver Broncos, per a report from Sharif Ishaq of WDSU. There, he will rejoin the staff of former Saints head coach Sean Payton, who has attracted other New Orleans staffers in his tenure there. Longtime Saints athletic trainer Beau Lowery is also on staff in Denver.

Meijer, a native of Houston, was a college football defensive back for the Texas Longhorns before moving into the medical profession. He saw the field limitedly for the 2004 and 2005 seasons, putting together 16 total tackles, six of which were solo.

He has been based in Elmwood, La. and is a part of the Oschner Health Network, specializing in elbow, knee and shoulder issues, in addition to regenerative medicine. The Saints have received a lot of criticism for their handling of injuries and partnership with Oschner in recent years, but this change may not make things better.

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Drew Brees’ 2016 season called one of the NFL’s best wasted years

Drew Brees’ 2016 campaign featured big numbers but no playoff games. His efforts were picked as one of the best wasted seasons in recent memory:

Bleacher Report’s David Kenyon was inspired by Joe Burrow and the Cincinnati Bengals missing the playoffs to create a list of the seven best seasons in the NFL since 2010 that amounted to nothing. Burrow inspired this list, and his teammate Ja’Marr Chase could have made the list. It’s stunning to think those two players had the season they had, and the Bengals missed the playoffs.

They fell short in a fashion the New Orleans Saints are too familiar with, great offense with questionable defense. Drew Brees would be dealing to Marques Colston, Brandin Cooks or an undrafted free agent. It didn’t matter for Brees, but at the end of the season, the Saints wouldn’t make it past the regular season.

Brees led the league in passing yards for three straight seasons between 2014 to 2016, and the Saints had a 7-9 record each year. Of these three seasons, Kenyon placed a spotlight on the 2016 year.

In that season, Brees passed for 5,208 yards. That was the third-most yards in league history at the time, and it still ranks sixth all time. It wasn’t just yards, either. The Saints scored the most points in the NFL. The only problem is they allowed the second-most. That’s not a recipe for success.

Great offense, bad defense. It’s the combination that inspired this list, and the reason Drew Brees’ 2016 finds itself among the group.

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