News that the New Orleans Saints planned to sit down with longtime Stanford head coach David Shaw may have felt like it came out of left field, but he’s no stranger to the organization. The Denver Broncos senior personnel executive has a lot of fans at the team headquarters on Airline Drive, and he has a couple of unexpected connections to the Saints worth noting.
His father Willie Shaw is a Louisiana native born in Glenmora, a small town outside Alexandria in rural Rapides Parish. The elder Shaw coached in both the NFL and at the college level from 1970 to 2002, largely working with linebackers and defensive backs on 14 different teams; that included a stop with the Saints in 1997. He coached defensive backs on Mike Ditka’s first staff, working closely with a rookie Sammy Knight, a young Alex Molden (who went on to play 100 games in the pros, doing his part to slow down “the Greatest Show on Turf” in the Saints’ first playoff win over the St. Louis Rams), and star cornerback Eric Allen, who is a finalist for enshrinement to the Pro Football Hall of Fame again this year.
The elder Shaw left the Saints for a promotion to defensive coordinator on the Oakland Raiders a year later, where his son joined him as a quality control coach. That’s the same position David Shaw had held on the Philadelphia Eagles the season before — working closely with Sean Payton and the Eagles quarterbacks.
Payton has been in Shaw’s corner ever since. He’s called for NFL teams to hire Shaw before, and when Shaw stepped away from Stanford he moved quickly to recruit the talented coach to Denver. After some time on the Broncos’ scouting staff, Shaw is at least interested in coaching an NFL team for himself. Having the endorsement of the most successful coach in New Orleans Saints franchise history obviously means a lot to general manager Mickey Loomis and other team decisionmakers. Let’s see how well his interview goes and whether he can capitalize on this opportunity.
Update: New reports say the Saints do not have plans to interview Shaw “at this time.”
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