This is a terrible look for Mickey Loomis and the people the New Orleans Saints general manager has put in charge. Former Saints backup Zack Baun won a nod to the 2025 Pro Bowl Games in his first year with the Philadelphia Eagles, having put up some impressive numbers through 16 games.
His 151 combined tackles are second-most around the league; 93 of them were solo, and he had 11 tackles for loss. He also bagged 3.5 sacks, twice as many as he had in his 62-game Saints career, to go with five forced fumbles (plus a recovery), an interception, and four pass deflections. Now he’s on the way to the Pro Bowl, where he won’t share a spot with a single Saints player on the NFC roster. All 15 other teams in the NFC have at least one Pro Bowler, but not the team Loomis built.
His role hasn’t changed from what he did in New Orleans, either — he’s still primarily an off-the-ball linebacker manning the middle of the field, not a pass rusher working off the edge like he did in college. But unlike the Saints, the Eagles have been willing to give him opportunities to play. And he’s making the most of them.
Baun signed a one-year prove-it deal with the Eagles valued at $3.5 million, but he earned a $500,000 incentive with a spot on the NFC roster for the Pro Bowl Games. He admitted Thursday that he initially laughed when he saw that incentive written into the contract back in March, but he’s as happy as any Eagles fan to have beaten expectations.
And the Saints should be ashamed of themselves for failing to get more out of him when he was in town. Loomis greenlit the decision to trade up for Baun back in 2020, but Dennis Allen and linebackers coach Michael Hodges never came up with a plan for getting Baun on the field. They only let him play special teams while the team drafted other linebackers in three of the next four cycles — in 2021 (Pete Werner), 2022 (D’Marco Jackson), and 2024 (Jaylan Ford).
That’s just the latest example of a bad decision by Loomis and the team he’s built. They had a Pro Bowler sitting on the bench watching Demario Davis get older and Pete Werner experience so many inconsistencies that they had to sign Willie Gay to push him for his job last summer. And now they’ve got a need at linebacker with the defense giving up the second-most yards per carry (4.9) in the NFL. The answer was in front of them the all time but Loomis and Allen were too stubborn to see it. Allen has already been ousted from his job. Loomis should probably be next. He certainly shouldn’t be trusted to find Allen’s replacement.
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