Tag: Dennis Lauscha

PFT: Saints feel too much blame is going on Dennis Allen and Derek Carr

PFT’s Mike Florio reports that Saints leadership feels too much blame is going on Dennis Allen and Derek Carr, the most important people in their organization:

The New Orleans Saints have been a tough team to watch this year. Another year of Dennis Allen at head coach with a $150 million quarterback next to him in Derek Carr has the team right back where they were at the end of last season: praying for help from other teams to get them to the playoffs.

Allen is knocking on the door of his first winning season in five years as a head coach, which wouldn’t be enough to get the team to the playoffs — where Derek Carr is still looking for his first career postseason win after a decade in the NFL. Changes may be on the way for the Saints if they can’t win the NFC South and get into the playoffs, but Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio reports that Allen and Carr are here to stay.

Florio shares that Saints leadership (meaning some combination of general manager Mickey Loomis, team president Dennis Lauscha, and owner Gayle Benson) don’t view Allen as “part of the problem in New Orleans.” Nor his quarterback. Florio adds that, “The feeling is that too much blame is being placed on Allen and quarterback Derek Carr for the team’s struggles in 2023, and that Allen and Carr could be key components of a resurgence in 2024.”

That’s laughable, but the Saints have not conducted themselves like a serious franchise since Drew Brees and Sean Payton left them to fend for themselves. Allen and Carr are the most important people in the organization. Everything rides on the franchise quarterback taking up so many salary cap resources. All of the decisions are on Allen’s plate, whose defense has fallen into inconsistency when he hasn’t been able to manage it personally.

Giving them both a mulligan and hoping for “some cultural tweaks” as Florio mentions is, well, ridiculous. The Saints had built a winning culture that demanded accountability of its best players during their franchise-best run from 2017 to 2020. When Allen took over, they’ve fallen into the same losing culture he installed with the Raiders a decade ago that Carr perpetuated after he was let go. Whether Allen is feuding with big egos on the team or Carr is barking at his teammates and coaches, it hasn’t been pretty. But more of the same appears to be Loomis and Lauscha’s vision for this team in 2024.

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Report: Dennis Allen ‘is in a good spot’ after 14-18 start with Saints

NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport reports that Dennis Allen ‘is in a good spot’ with the Saints despite his 14-18 start as their head coach. He isn’t on the hot seat:

There’s no rational explanation for the New Orleans Saints to stand by Dennis Allen as their head coach, but general manager Mickey Loomis and team president Dennis Lauscha appear to be manufacturing one anyway. All they have to show team owner Gayle Benson is another losing record after investing $150 million in quarterback Derek Carr to support Allen’s vision for the team. There are two games left to play against NFC South rivals that soundly beat Allen’s team earlier this season.

But change isn’t on the horizon, per NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport. Rapoport’s sources have found little to complain about Allen during his 14-18 run as Saints head coach through two years.

“My understanding is that Dennis Allen is in a good spot,” Rapoport said. “Obviously if it goes horrific at the end of the year, this is always subject to change, life is subject to change, but that is where it stands right now.”

This news come off the heels of the Saints’ inept performance in a Thursday night loss to the Los Angeles Rams. Both teams may have entered the game with matching 7-7 records, but the Rams left no doubt that they were the better team. The Saints didn’t lead on the scoreboard for a single minute in their 30-22 loss, which wasn’t as close as that final tally would imply.

So why stick by Allen? What does he bring to the table when his handcrafted defense is allowing a 95-yard touchdown drive? Rapoport’s explanation reeks of the sunk cost fallacy.

Rapoport continued, “One of the reasons is they’re not getting out of where they are any time soon. Derek Carr is fully guaranteed for next year. Could they move on, I don’t think they want to, it’s expensive if they decide to. You have a roster that’s getting a little older, getting a little slower, it’s still really expensive. Off the edge it’s not as fast or twitchy as you’d like.”

Loomis invested a ton of draft picks in Allen’s vision for the team, with little to show for it. He was fleeced in a trade with the Philadelphia Eagles aimed at getting left tackle Trevor Penning last year and Penning has hardly played since getting benched early this season. Loomis traded up for both of the Saints’ picks in the fourth round this year (offensive lineman Nick Saldiveri and quarterback Jake Haener), and those two players have combined for 18 snaps across 15 games.

The cupboard is looking awfully bare. With a complicated salary cap situation and few draft picks to spend on young talent, the Saints are stuck with the roster they’ve built for themselves — and for Allen. He got his quarterback, who hasn’t met expectations, and the defense he’s spent years cultivating is withering. So is there a light at the end of the tunnel if Allen and this group are returning for 2024?

“If they’re going to rebuild, they’re going to have to actually rebuild, and it just doesn’t feel like that’s something you do with a completely new coach,” Rapoport mused. “And you can’t do it next year basically anyway, so it does seem primed for a reboot in New Orleans.”

That’s not the most inspiring message, but it’s the reality the team is in. Rather than bring in a new coach with fresh ideas who can try to rally the group they have, they’re looking to ride it out with Allen and Carr through 2024 and then consider wholesale changes when it’s more affordable. That isn’t going to be a popular move with a fanbase that has already had its fill of Allen and Carr, but that’s the course Loomis and Lauscha must feel is best for their team. They’ve been wrong on almost every decision since hiring Allen so far. Maybe they’re due for getting something right.

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How long of a leash does Dennis Allen have with Saints ownership?

ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler thinks the Saints don’t want to make a change at head coach after the season, but Dennis Allen’s poor performance is hard to ignore:

Who is going to be coaching the New Orleans Saints in 2024? Could Dennis Allen return after struggling to reach (much less hold on to) a winning record in either of his two years as their head coach?

That’s no sure thing, but some recent scuttlebutt suggests the Saints are at least hesitant to consider making a move from Allen just yet. The latest buzz comes from ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler, who shared what he’s hearing in a back-and-forth with his colleague Dan Graziano:

“I don’t think the Saints want to make a change on Dennis Allen, but another losing season would mark two in a row, which wasn’t the norm in the Sean Payton era (though he did have a stretch of three consecutive 7-9 seasons from 2014 to ’16). It still needs to be seen how much grace New Orleans’ front office and ownership is willing to apply.”

Honestly, it’s odd that the situations would be compared; Payton earned his goodwill with a Super Bowl XLIV championship and a record-setting run with Drew Brees, helping the quarterback not just reinvent himself after a career-threatening injury but build a Hall of Fame resume.

Allen fixed Rob Ryan’s mess of a defense, which was no mean feat. Then he developed it into an elite unit. That was enough to give general manager Mickey Loomis and team president Dennis Lauscha the confidence to back Gayle Benson’s decision to hire him despite his historically poor run as a head coach a decade earlier with the Raiders. But when you look at the Saints’ fortunes since Allen was promoted to head coach, there’s little logic behind sticking with him.

An admittedly injury-ridden Saints team limped out of their Week 14 bye last year with a 4-9 record. They gave Allen free rein to recruit Derek Carr, investing $60 million guaranteed in a passer whose last team ditched him and whose free agency experience was lukewarm at best. What does Allen have to show for it a year later? The Saints are coming out of Week 14 with a 6-7 record. They’ve improved by just two wins.

There’s no valid reason to stick with Allen. His defense — his defense, the unit he’s drafted and developed and filled with veteran free agents — is eroding by the week. What was supposed to be the strength of the team has allowed the seventh-most rushing yards and tied for the third-fewest sacks in the NFL this season. They can’t stop the run or rush the passer. Allen’s offense still can’t score points between Carr panicking in the red zone and rookie kicker Blake Grupe shanking 29-yard field goals. Visiting fans are taking over the lower bowl in the Caesars Superdome, and Carr is being met with boos whenever he jogs off the field after another stalled-out drive. The team is in a bad place even after a lopsided (yet unconvincing) win over a division rival last Sunday.

So we’ve got two reasons for the Saints to keep Allen. In the first scenario, they’ll outlast their rivals in the NFC South and win the division to host a home playoff game (likely against a Super Bowl contender like the Dallas Cowboys), which likely won’t go well. It’ll also drop their first-round pick in the 2024 NFL draft away from the best prospects, which could be devastating when bad trades from Loomis cost them their second-, third- and fourth-round picks. But, Loomis can say, they did reach the postseason after falling short last year. And that’s tangible progress.

What if the Saints miss the playoffs and still keep Allen? That’s when the excuses might start rushing out: injuries to star players like Michael Thomas and Marshon Lattimore (just like last year) plus Carr, who is valiantly playing through a sprained throwing shoulder, three injured ribs and two concussions. That’s an easy way to wave off his poor performance this season.

The rebuttal to that is the Saints having the healthiest roster in the league through the first 10 weeks and still idling at 5-5 before the injuries hit. But if the team leadership group has seen Allen’s team get worse by the week and find new ways to lose football games into mid-December, odds are strong that Benson, Loomis and Lauscha aren’t going to acknowledge that criticism in January. It would take something drastic to convince them that hiring Allen and committing harder to his vision for the team was the wrong move.

Allen is two years into his four-year contract. Carr’s heaviest guarantees extend into 2024. Maybe the plan all along has been to give Allen those two years with his quarterback and see if he can make something happen before kickstarting a reboot in 2025 (maybe without Loomis, the longest-tenured general manager in the NFL) once the salary cap has skyrocketed to wipe out years of financial maneuvering and cost deferments. All fans can do is stand by, see how this all plays out, and hope the team gives them a product worth cheering for.

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Dennis Allen’s 5-7 record is the best he’s ever had after Week 13

Dennis Allen’s 5-7 record is the best he’s ever had after Week 13. The Saints must acknowledge that this is his ceiling and take meaningful action, but will they?

The latest New Orleans Saints losing streak extended to three games after the black and gold fell short to the Detroit Lions. It’s disappointing, but not surprising: this is what a Dennis Allen-led team looks like. The Saints’ 5-7 record is the best Allen has ever had after Week 13 in his five years as an NFL head coach.

Look at his resume. The Saints were 4-9 at this point last season. Allen went 3-9 and 4-8 in his first two years with the Raiders, who dismissed him before he could reach this point in his third season. Five wins in a dozen games is the ceiling for what Allen is capable of.

So much of that is due to an underperforming offense, but Allen has to take the blame for that. He made the decision to go get Derek Carr as his quarterback. He wasn’t able to recruit an upgrade at play caller and believed Pete Carmichael could get the job done. That hasn’t been the case. This year’s offense is not appreciably better than the product the Saints rolled out last year.

And Allen’s defense, the reason he was promoted to this job, has fallen off. They can’t stop the run or pressure the quarterback. It’s a unit relying on too many aging veterans without enough up-and-coming young players ready to sustain success. They’ve lost defenders who were drafted and developed year after year, replacing them with subpar free agent pickups. Allen hasn’t accomplished what he was trusted to do.

So where does that leave the Saints? It’s never easy to fire a coach midseason, and it’s not something they’ve done in decades, not since the Tom Benson bought the team. Odds are Allen will remain in position for these last five games. If the Saints keep fighting (and they will), there’s a good chance general manager Mickey Loomis and team president Dennis Lauscha will make excuses for him and bring Allen back for 2024 to ride out the second year of Carr’s contract, which was already guaranteed against the salary cap when he signed it.

That isn’t what they should do, though. If the Saints were committed to long-term success they’d pull the plug on this experiment now. It’s beyond clear that Allen won’t take them where they want to go. What they should do is thank him for what he’s done in the past, show him the door so he can get a jump on job hunting in the next hiring cycle, and focus on what’s next: locking in a top-10 draft pick (if not top-5) to spend on a real quarterback to lure a new coach who can run an offense in the spring.

But don’t count on it. The efforts of proud veterans and the still-weak schedule left this season mean the Saints aren’t about to go in a new direction. They would rather project patience and stability than take action to give fans something to cheer about. It’s going to take more than a close loss to a better team (coached by a popular former Saints assistant they let get away…) to spur Loomis, Lauscha, and team owner Gayle Benson into changing course now.

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Saints among teams that voted against Thursday night flex scheduling

The Saints are among the teams that voted against Thursday night flex scheduling at spring NFL owners meetings:

The New Orleans Saints are among the teams that voted against Thursday night flex scheduling at spring NFL owners meetings, as first reported by NBC Sports’ Peter King. Notably, Saints owner Gayle Benson was not in attendance, having instead made the trip to New York City for NBA Board of Governors meetings to fulfill her responsibilities as owner of the New Orleans Pelicans.

Maybe Benson will vote differently than team president Dennis Lauscha did (as her representative) when NFL owners regroup for another roundtable in May, but it’s more likely they are both on the same page here. The Saints could have chosen to abstain altogether, as the Carolina Panthers and Denver Broncos did, but they decided to vote against the proposal outright. NFL bylaws needed 24 votes for the Thursday night flex scheduling rules change to pass, but it came up short.

It’s been a divisive topic. Thursday night games haven’t done as well with ratings as traditional Sunday and Monday night prime-time games, so from that perspective moving better matchups into that time slot makes sense. But it asks a lot of the players and coaches to switch up their preparation schedule even on two weeks’ notice — to say nothing of the tens of thousands of fans who have to make expensive travel arrangements in the event of a flex. We’ll see if this passes eventually or if there’s enough opposition to shelve it altogether.

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Opinion: Saints shouldn’t delay inevitable severance with Dennis Allen

We’ve seen enough. The Saints shouldn’t delay an inevitable severance with Dennis Allen. They have the means and enough reason to move on right now:

I’ve seen enough: it’s time for the New Orleans Saints to move on from Dennis Allen. His team hasn’t improved over 10 games to start their season — if anything, they’re losing each week in the exact same manner they started what’s looking like a doomed campaign. When he was coaching the Raiders, Allen went 4-12 twice, then lost his first four games before being fired. He’s on the same path this year with a team largely agreed to be more talented than those he once inherited.

Allen is returning the same results now that he did a decade ago with the Raiders with a penalty-rife team that can’t consistently play well on offense, defense, or special teams. This team was built on the strength of Allen’s defense, which has collapsed without him being able to fine-tune it after his promotion to head coach. The offense has disappointed, and a typically-stout special teams unit has been one of the NFL’s worst despite little change over previous years.

If they couldn’t take care of business against a two-win Pittsburgh Steelers squad starting a rookie quarterback with a bum ankle, which teams can they defeat?

There’s no use waiting around to find out. They aren’t mathematically eliminated from playoff contention yet, and that’s not going to happen for a while considering how bad the other NFC South teams are, but the Saints would be 0-3 against those same teams if not for a last-second blocked field goal in Week 1. Allen isn’t going to be the Saints head coach for 15 years like Sean Payton was. Whether he’s dismissed this week, in a few months, or in a year or two, this story ends with the Saints showing him the door. He hasn’t earned any benefit of the doubt in these results, or faith that we’ll see a major turnaround.

And if they’re smart, the Saints won’t delay the inevitable. Here’s how it could happen:

Reports outline Gayle Benson’s Saints ownership succession plan

Reports outline Gayle Benson’s Saints ownership succession plan

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The Times-Picayune | Advocate and WVUE-TV reported the first installment in a three-chapter series on the future of the New Orleans Saints on Thursday, the details of which were confirmed by ESPN’s Mike Triplett.

Here’s the gist of it: Benson, 74, has no heirs and intends for the Saints to be sold upon her passing to a buyer who is contractually-bound to keep the team in New Orleans, and for the proceeds to be donated to charities throughout the city. Saints president Dennis Lauscha will serve as the executor of her estate (and, if he is no longer around, for team executives Mickey Loomis and Greg Bensel to see to it).

That would create an influx of potentially several billions of dollars — the latest estimates value the team at more than $2.5 billion — to the New Orleans community, distributed over the years and committed to serving those who need it. Additionally, the Superdome recently inked a long-term naming-rights deal with Caesars Entertainment, which includes options to extend the arrangement another ten to twenty years, further raising the Saints’ valuation. There are still many details to be worked out, but it’s good to know that money would be put to good use.

The future of the Saints has been a topic of curiosity and anxiety ever since longtime owner Tom Benson died in 2018; now, we know there’s a plan in place to keep the team where it belongs and directly benefit the fans and community that have made it so special.

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