New Orleans Saints Forums - blackandgold.com - If Andy Dalton, Why Not Marv Lewis, Seriously?

Hear me out...

We gave Winston 3 games. He was hurt. He was ineffective. Now people say we should switch over to Dalton. He looked better. I don't disagree. It's worth a try I think and even if it probably won't work out much better we need a change.

But why does Dennis Allen deserve so much more patience than Winston? Allen wasn't hurt. He knows the system. He took over a winning team after years at Paytons side. And the result is very bad. And there is more reason to think the bad results are a pattern, Allen's career winning percentage as a head coach is much worse than Winstons as a starting QB. Winston looked better when Payton was coaching. Allen has never looked good as a head coach. Why is Allen not as accountable as Winston? Some say he can't help all the players making mistakes, but the whole point of a coach is to get the players to make less mistakes, and that has never been Allen's forte. He sees Ingram fumble and he sees another player outperform Ingram and he goes back to Ingram because something about Ingram reminds him of himself, something that starts with an s and ends with an ing.

So if Winston can be replaced by Dalton, who is the 'Dalton' to replace Dennis Allen. Enter Marvin Lewis. Seriously.

Marv Lewis is currently working as some kind of college assistant advisor. He is only about 64 years old. He is presumably available. His career winning percentage as a head coach is .518. Dennis Allen's currently stands at .225. Lewis was 0-7 in the playoffs but Dennis Allen will never make the playoffs, and sometimes the playoffs can just be bad luck, Lewis' best Bengals team lost their starting QB right before the playoffs and had to start AJ McCarron and came within 2 points of beating the Steelers. Marv Lewis is basically Jim Mora, and Jim Mora is an upgrade over Dennis Allen. Dennis Allen blames a toxic organization for his previous losing with the Raiders even though he is losing at the same pace with the Saints. Marv Lewis coached a similar toxis organization and won. He is not great. He probably won't win a Superbowl. But he is alright and available and not embarrassing. His last few years his teams were below his standards but still 6-10 at worst. Dennis Allen has never won more than 4 games in a season. When Marv Lewis left, the Bengals were 2-14 the first year without him, with a better head coach that Dennis Allen, so Lewis can elevate a team with serious deficiencies. He built the winning tradition in Cincinnati that made their later Super Bowl appearance with Joe Burrow possible, the main thing the next guy did was lose enough to get Joe Burrow.

Lewis is old enough that he won't want to stick around forever and could be a caretaker. We aren't going to be at the top of anyones list for top tier head coaching candidates, and we need to go through a rebuild to clean up our salary cap and have first round picks again. Lewis could take us through that rebuild starting in a few weeks while maintaining respectability and keeping us out of the cellar. He could prevent the embarrassment of giving Philadelphia the #1 overall draft pick and probably get us something like 5-8 down the stretch. If he surprises, maybe he could win, it would not be unheard of for a solid but unspectacular coach to do better in a second run. If he continues on Allen's trajectory and we do have the most losses in the league, we can move on to someone like Brian Flores next year, Lewis would probably not demand a multi year contract to take over.

Replacing Dennis Allen with Marv Lewis would send a strong message to the entire roster. Everyone is accountable no matter who you are. .250 is not good enough. Andrus Peat go run a few laps. Mark Ingram this sack of flour is your baby don't drop it. No Lattimore you can't take every other week off if you go through the motions and pretend like you are trying to cover the receivers.