Re: Head Coach Material
 

Payton did not pull things together year in and out. He had three 7-9 seasons in a row and 4 seasons out of 5 at one point. This was with prime Brees.

How was Allen left pretty good with the WRs/TE/DBs/QB situation that injuries have forced him to play with this year? Be real.

Re: Head Coach Material
 

allen had wr's and was stacked at db.'s, we haven't had a good te well before allen so i consider that a wash, the qb. i'll bite on, he also was left with a really good d, it's his fault he let go the db's and that is being real.allens a joke as a hc, a joke we're stuck with it seems.

Re: Head Coach Material
 

Kevin White, trequan smith and Callaway are good WRs huh? and it’s Allen’s fault that they couldn’t afford CGJ and the safeties they lost in the off-season? Again, respect your opinion but you aren’t looking at things Objectively. This is the same team that the great Sean Payton was 9-8 with last year except we are worse off BY FAR at the safety spot and now at LB with Werner out. That’s a fact. It’s not Allen’s fault the economics dictated he lose the players he did.

Re: Head Coach Material
 

Not the injuries holistically, but the general age of the team is a problem. We have the second oldest team in the league, second only to Tampa (whose age situation is skewed by 45 year old Brady). That generally means more injuries, plus we have a high percentage of players who have reached their ceiling and the room for drastic improvement with a youth movement (like you are seeing with the Eagles and Giants) just isn't there.

And to be fair, half of the problem of CSP being gone is the removal of his offensive mind. To me the loss to the Ravens was mostly on Carmichael ... Taysom with very limited snaps/touches and rarely every using Kamara on outside runs (not even off tackle runs) continues to infuriate me. Easier to defend Kamara when you know it's an A or B gap run all day.

Re: Head Coach Material
 

Fair enough. But there’s only so much Allen can do to make the team younger in one offseason. And again, I’m not touting him or his performance. I’m just saying judging him by what he’s had to work with is not an honest evaluation. Again, Sean Payton was 9-8 with this same basic team except he had better safties and a better oline.

Re: Head Coach Material
 

Systematically the injuries and the inability to overcome them are Loomis' fault. He built an old team. He traded away a large number of various early and middle round draft picks for a few very high draft picks meaning fewer young players on the roster. We could afford CGJ, he was under contract on a cheap rookie deal, but we failed to call him bluff when he did a hold in. There is no real difference between showing up and refusing to talk to the coaches or just holding out at home and plenty of players have held out at home and the team calls their bluff and they come back and play. Then if he left in free agency next year we get a 3rd round comp pick or we tag him and force a team to trade a 2nd for him if he is getting better offers. In part CGJ is gone because we gave the big money to the Molasses Badger. That was Loomis making us older and more injury prone. And what about giving Taysom Hill in his 30's $10 million a year to be our wildcat backup running back despite a long injury history including injuries every year in college. And then also nobody put a gun to Loomis' head and said you have to sign the oldest active running back to ever be a Saint back to our team, rather than investing say a 4th round pick in a young guy.

One important factor is that the way Loomis manages the salary cap causes us to have more injury prone players. When other teams see a player getting hurt too much like OBJ, Victor Cruz, etc they cut or trade them. But Loomis manages our cap at 150% capacity and backloads all his contracts at 300% capacity and depends on annual restructuring of every big contract to make up the annual $70 million cap deficit. So when we have an OBJ or Victor Cruz or RG3 we don't cut or trade them, we hand the doctor a note with their lines "he is expected to make a complete recovery despite the latest setback" and we sign the injured player to an extension so we can prorate their salary to 2030.

Also sometimes when other teams have an injury to a star its a positive. Remember Drew Bledsoe and Tom Brady. Tom Brady was a mid round pick, that thing Loomis loves to throw away like he is Pacman Jones in a vegas strip club and the picks are small bills. But other teams are loaded with second and third stringers who were mid round picks, so sometimes when a star is injured, they find the backup is better. Our backups are undrafted free agents and has beens, so we find that out a lot less.

We are old and brittle and scarred and its a roster management issue. It's Loomis' fault more than Allen's. Payton could have done better without Loomis too. If Loomis had made sure the doctors did due diligence before signing Nick Fairly, we might have two Superbowls in 2017 and 2018, we were quite possibly one player away. During the 7-9 years a lot of high injury risk players like Browner and Breaux contributed to the losses, we basically had two cripples at corner. But for Dennis Allen he was .222 with the Raiders so that kind of kills the benefit of the doubt for me. I think our 2022 roster is actually better than 2021 because at least we have one good receiver which I think is a lot better than none, and we have passable QBs, even if neither is more than passable. Payton won 9 games relying on the likes of Semien to White in the passing game after Winston went down. Allen at least has the receivers to get the offense to move. But Allen is not a leader, he is a guy who was wounded by the trauma of attempting to be a leader, who was given his job by a guy who assembles wounded and fragile people together on a team for a living and then restructures their contracts a lot to get called a cap wizard.

Re: Head Coach Material
 

I understand your point but comparing what Dennis Allen has done to Sean Payton's last year is not apples to apples.

Sean Payton was 9-8 and not with a "better oline".
That "better oline" had the starting five playing a total of 22 snaps together last season. The team set the NFL record for fielding the most starters in a single season and lost their starting quarterback in Week 8 to an injury.

No Wil Lutz might’ve been the biggest blow of all. The trio of Johnson, Aldrick Rosas, and Cody Parkey missed a combined three field goals and five extra points. The Saints lost back-to-back games to the Falcons and Titans, both narrow two-point victories.

They’re not the first team to traverse the pitfalls of replacing a longtime franchise quarterback but they may be the first to start four quarterbacks (after losing their starter in Week 8) behind an injury-riddled offensive line missing both starting tackles and left guard.

For perspective, the Denver Broncos went 6-10 following Elway’s retirement in 1999 and didn’t win another playoff game until 2005. Steve Young retired unexpectedly following a concussion in 1999; the 49ers went 6-10 in 2000 and struggled for years until Jim Harbaugh arrived. Troy Aikman had a great supporting cast and retired on top in 2000. Dallas went 5-11 the next year and floundered until Tony Romo. After going 6-10 following Jim Kelly’s retirement in 1996, the Buffalo Bills had a 17-year postseason drought until Josh Allen showed up in 2018.

Re: Head Coach Material
 

These comparisons can never be apples to apples because of roster changes. Sure There were a lot of injuries last year, but having Armstead at all last year and not having Penning at all this year the overall talent dropped. At worst guys like Throckmorton are playing just like last year, so it’s a wash.

Likewise Lutz has missed more kicks than usual this year, so his “return” has been a wash. Blake’s punting hasn’t been as good as last year either, so overall Allen has had less to work with overall at special teams too.

Your point/examples about franchise QBs not being easily replaced is interesting, but not surprising (Although in your example young replaced a franchise guy in Montana). But I can give examples that do go that way…Favre to Rogers; Manning to Luck; Bledsoe to Brady. Either way, when a franchise suffers after a long period of winning like in the examples you mention it doesn’t mean it’s because of the coach. More likely it’s a mix of roster moves based on financial decisions and years of having draft picks in the later half of the draft that lead to a talent deficient team. Especially when the injury bug hits a team.

Which brings me back to my point. I believe it would be more accurate to asses Allen’s ability as head coach had he been able to field a team with Landry, Thomas, Penning, Lattimore etc. to see what he could do. I realize this is not possible. But the performance against the Raiders two weeks ago was better than anything I remember (off the top of my head) seeing Payton put out his last season coaching the Saints. That leads me to think Allen is at least capable of fielding a good team.

To me it’s like saying your driver sucks for not winning the Indy 500 when his car isn’t allowed to have pit stops.

Re: Head Coach Material
 

Come on. They had a guy start on the O-line on Sunday who was signed off the street on Thursday - even Payton said in an interview that he didn't even know the guy's name.

The injuries and games missed due to the pandemic related stuff were unreal last season, and still they were close to getting into the playoffs - some of the credit for that has to be on coaching/scheming, and especially on SP.

Re: Head Coach Material
 

You guys are either missing or avoiding the point I’m trying to make. I wasn’t trying to do an individual comparison of injuries under Payton versus injuries under Allen. Yes, Payton had the Miami game to deal with. That skewed things greatly. But Allen has had close to the same situation and started with a fundamentally less talented team without Marcus Williams, Johnson, Armstead, and Jenkins.

Are you denying that injuries have hit Allen’s team pretty seriously this year? Has he NOT played games without his top QB, Top 3 WRs, Top RBs, Top CBs, and DLs? Seems I remember comments about how long his injury list was not too long ago. It’s tough to coach and win in the NFL when you have a full roster much less a banged up one. Allen has had a mostly banged up one. That is the point I’m making. If you disagree and think injuries and the talent you are able to put on the field don’t matter then fine. I disagree. Having healthy players makes a difference and Allen hasn’t had much of that. Payton would be struggling with this team and it’s injuries the same way he struggled with last year’s team the same way Allen is struggling with it. Could be why he decided to jump ship.