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i dunno gator... i have a good feeling about this year... like always... but then it just ends up in disapointment

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Yeah I don\'t know if I can settle for just a play-off birth this year. NFC Championship or else I\'ll be ready and ok with the dismissle of Jim Haslett. I love the man but damn... when its time to go its time to move on... change is good sometimes. One move I wish I would have seen this year is Dave Campo as D- coach

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Wow, I can\'t believe what i\'m reading. Heck I had to check to see if I was on another team\'s site. This team has only had one playoff win in team history, and it was our current coach who got it for us. I will agree that the last two seasons had really crappy endings, but Haslett is not the only one to blame. In 2001 we had a flake for a starting RB, the whos your daddy scandal, and Albert Connell being a guest star on Americas Dumbest Criminals. Offensively this past season we had injuries to Deuce and Aaron, and were basically playing without a TE for the entire season. Defisively our two starting tackles were one OREO cookie away from a heart attack, and should have been on a Richard Simmons video rather than a football field. Darren Howard is a stud but he was hurt most of the year, and the linebackers were exposed because of no pressure up front. I want this team to win the Super Bowl just as much as anybody, but calling for this coach\'s head for anything short of that victory is insane. Do you really want to get a coach who cries out the word \"Diddlypooh\" at the drop of a hat, or how bout a coach who styled a set of dreadlocks on draft day. Haslett is a good coach, and he will be an even better coach in the future. Just be careful people, because you just might get what you ask for. Do yourself a favor and give the man a chance.

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Bignuts is right (wow what a great handle!). Expectations have certainly changed from the 3-13 Ditka era. We\'ve won a playoff game for the first time in franchise history, and we\'re rated 6 and 10 in two different current power rankings.

I think we\'re in much better shape than I ever remember seeing this team. And as such, I\'m sticking by Haslett. He\'s done a lot in a short time, more than any coach so far, I believe.

Now, support for the current defensive coordinator on the other hand may be a different story..... we\'ll see.

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Are we so much better now because our coach is better? Or is the front office as a whole better? Frankly, I think we finally got good managers and scouts. That has improved the talent level on the team. Haslett has certainly been a part of that - I will give credit where credit is due.

HOWEVER, his primary purpose, his reason for being with the team, is to convert the pool of talent into a single unit. The end goal - a championship. Has Haslett helped raise the bar significantly in New Orleans? Absolutely. I still have a hard time looking at this question without considering the trend.

If the Saints don\'t make the playoffs this year. If they falter down the stretch... Haslett SHOULD go. Think about it this way - If you bought a stock at $30 and it soared to $100, then fell to $70, then soared again, only to fall again, how long would you hold it before you sold it and went looking for another stock to buy?

I cannot see any excuse this year. This team needs to take one big step forward, otherwise it\'s time to go looking elsewhere for a leader who can give us a shot at a championship.

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I have been riding that wave of ups and downs ever since i was a small kid, hell im sure everyone that visits this site has. The fact remains that it isnt as bumpy as it used to be. Look what happened in San Francisco, Mariucci is a great coach, but he didnt bring the 49ers back to the promise land so the fans and the front office nailed him to the wall. Now look who they have, a coach who was a bust his last time in the NFL. I believe this team has the potential to be great, hell we could win it all if we play up to potential. No team out there scares me anymore and alot of it has to do with our current coach.

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Pardon my french, but bullsh-t! You\'re not scared of any team out there b/c of our players. Same reason I think the Saints can play with anyone. But are you trying to tell me that if we had Mario Bates at RB or Dave Wilson at QB you\'d feel just as confident b/c Haslett is on the sideline?!

Granted, there is something to be said about a head coach and his ability to strategize, out think his opponent, and accept nothing but the best from his team. Are you saying that describes Haslett? Is he better than past coaches? Some, yes. I have a hard time saying that he is better than Mora or even Ditka. He may be better now than Ditka was when he was in NO, but can you really tell me that a guy with a 26-22 record and one playoff win to his name is a better coach than Ditka?... the \'85 Bears may be one of the best 5 or 10 football teams ever.

Anyway, that\'s neither here nor there. The point is that Haslett was instrumental in bringing this organization to a new level. However, he is yet to prove that he can lead the Saints to the ultimate goal - the Super Bowl. He deserves a lot of thanks and appreciation for his work thus far. However, that doesn\'t mean that he should get a free ride. Mora was the first coach to ever have a winning season in black and gold. He was the first guy to bring them to a playoff game - first to win a conference championship... and eventually, he had to go. Look, Dungy did incredible things for Tampa - but when push came to shove they had the talent and he couldn\'t get them over the hump. If the Tampa situation didn\'t prove that a great coach can make the difference with a team full of talent then I don\'t know what will.

Haslett\'s poured the foundation - the question is whether or not he can build the house. I have serious doubts about that - and if the frame falls down one more time I\'m ready to get another contractor.

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Ditka better than Haslett? Serious B-S! With the team Ditka had in Chicago he should have won at least 3 Super Bowls. The reason he even won 1 and no more was his Defensive coordinator. Anyone remember Buddy Ryan? THE most talented and revolutionary D-coordinator in our era. When he left in 86 the bears promptly went to poop. Ditka is a character, a cartoon not a great or even a good coach. I say give Jim a fair shot. He is learning as well. He is a young coach. I think a talented one as well. I sure would love to compete for the Super Bowl this year and think the Saints can, with some luck.

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Jim Mora proved to me that you couldnt win with Bates or Wilson. Ditka proved that he couldnt win with Heath Shuler. Mike Ditka may have won the big one in Chicago, but he was more interested in the craps table at Harrah\'s casino rather than coaching the Saints. The simple reason that we dont have third rate players here anymore are because of the coach and front office. Whodat made a valid point about Tony Dungy, he was replaced by Gruden, who in turn won the Super Bowl. Oh yeah, wasnt he fired in Oakland for not winning it there. With the little success that we have enjoyed here Im not gonna be so quick to pull the trigger, and neither should anyone else

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Gruden wasn\'t fired....He was more or less traded to Tampa.

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If Gruden wouldnt have been sent to Tampa, he wouldve gotten the axe. He wouldnt have returned to the Raiders. At least that was the story every newspaper in the country was reporting. Hell he was thinking about going to college football.

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i dont think ditka was all that bad of a coach.... he just got the axe after ricky didnt pan out like he had hoped.... with injuries and his disorder... ditka stood behind ricky williams and williams let him down.. and ditka got fired for it

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I think Ditka was that bad a coach.

He may have been good, perhaps even great -- but only as football stood at that time. The 80\'s were 20 years ago. I don\'t believe that mindset works anymore.

Regarding Ricky letting him down, I believe too much pressure (and hope) was put on him for any rookie to hanlde. I can\'t blame him for that. But I -can- blame the head coach that allowed an entire years draft to be effectively wasted on a single individual, one that resulted in a 3-13 season as we all know.

I think Ditka -was- that bad.

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Ditka was a bad SAINTS coach, not a bad coach. In an era where Passing, Offense, and Speed are all the rage, Ditka was committed to a hard-nose pound it down their throats type of play that no longer works in our era - obviously it worked very well in the mid 80\'s. I will concur that Buddy Ryan certainly helped that team - but I have long maintained that a coach\'s job is as much about surrounding himself with good assistants as anything else. If our coordinators are bad, point your finger at one place - Jim Haslett - b/c ultimately he is the instrument in deciding who fills those positions.

I don\'t remember hearing anything about Gruden getting fired in Oakland. Maybe I\'m wrong, I just don\'t remember much of anything coming out of the Bay Area other than a ton of whining about the tuck rule after Gruden\'s final season.

Bottom line is that a coach cannot do something with nothing. Most of the coaches, if not all, prior to Jimmy boy had one major disadvantage - our teams were never as talented as others. That began to change with Finks during the Mora years, then we regressed significantly with the Weasle, and have taken one giant step forward with Mueller and Loomis.

To me, it was hard to rate our coaches in the past b/c you never knew if our talent was close to other teams, or well below them. Now, I know we have more talent than most. Still, the results are not much better than they have been since the late 80\'s. So I look to the coach. You think it doesn\'t matter? Well let\'s go back to that Gruden example. He was basically one questionable call away from the Super Bowl two years ago. His successor mostly used the system that Gruden had already put in place, and it landed the Raiders in the Super Bowl. More importantly, Gruden went to a team that was consistently 9-7 or 10-6 and could never make it to the big game, and brought them to that big game in his first season. Coaching matters - it matters a lot. Go look up the stats - most coaches (in the \"modern\" era) make it to their first Super Bowl with a new team within their first three or four years. This is Haslett\'s fourth. If there is not significant improvement this year then I can say that I\'ve seen enough.

It\'s just my opinion, and it doesn\'t smell much better than that other thing we all have... ;)