It’s safe to say the New Orleans Saints haven’t experienced as much success as they hoped for once Drew Brees called it a career. They’ve started a worrying series of quarterbacks in his place including Andy Dalton (14 games), Jameis Winston (10), Trevor Siemian (4), Taysom Hill (3), and Ian Book (1). As a team, the Saints have won 16 of their last 34 games with those passers in the lineup.
And former Saints quarterback Jim Everett puts much of that blame on general manager Mickey Loomis. Everett ranks fifth in New Orleans’ record books with 10,622 career passing yards, which he assembled in a 47-game run with the Saints from 1994 to 1996. Now, with his old team scrambling to recruit Derek Carr while being linked to Baker Mayfield and draft prospects like Hendon Hooker, he sees a disturbing lack of vision in New Orleans.
“After Drew Brees, it’s been a ship without a rudder, because they’ve just kind of been floating around,” Everett told Compare.bet’s Kyle Odegard. He pointed to the Saints’ widely-panned decision to trade up for Marcus Davenport in the 2018 draft, bypassing the 2019 league MVP Lamar Jackson along the way, as a badly missed opportunity. Everett continued, “You’ve got to have a plan. Mickey’s got to have a plan from the start. When they moved up and drafted Davenport, I thought they were taking Lamar to fill the cupboard. That didn’t happen. You had Drew Brees, and you didn’t have a plan after Drew, and these are the consequences.”
Everett did give Loomis some props for his year-to-year management of the team and its talent acquisition, but he took issue with the live-in-the-moment strategy that has left them without a sure thing under center. Even last year’s leading quarterback, Dalton, wasn’t signed with the expectation that he’d start 14 games. The plan from March to September was for Winston to play each week and help get the Saints to the playoffs. But back-to-back years with serious injuries took him out of action, and Loomis has quickly had to pivot from Plan A to Plan B, and sometimes Plans C or D.
It’s fair to wonder how much of the team’s vision left with Sean Payton a year ago. Dennis Allen’s first move as head coach was to full-throttle in pursuit of controversial quarterback Deshaun Watson, who didn’t exactly impress anyone when he finally returned from suspension last season. When the Saints struck out on Watson they went back to Winston and signed him to a two-year deal they’re likely to tear up soon. As Everett pointed out, they haven’t invested draft picks in a serious developmental prospect.
Everett added: ““I understand bringing in a serviceable veteran, a guy that can fill the gap. To some extent, I did that role with the Saints for awhile. But being real about where they are, they must find a rookie quarterback to rebuild that salary cap. It’s paramount. There are no two ways about it.”
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