I think we all know that Allen knows what he is doing with the defense. I just don't see the scenario where the defense is the cause for any overall failure which would lead to Allen's being fired. If the offense shows any improvement early the team as a whole is going to be better and no way Allen gets fired under that scenario. If the offense comes out as bad or worse than what we've had the past two years then then Allen may not make it, but Kubiak absolutely would be gone as well because he has full say on that side of the ball.

Basically, if Kubiak is successful Allen isn't going anywhere, but Kubiak may get offers to go elsewhere.

I can see many paths to such a scenario. They are all a bit unlikely but all probably have precedents.

1. The offense starts off ok and continuously improves, but the bottom falls out from the defense. No way you say? Consider that the best player on our defense, Demario Davis, is a 35yo linebacker. So far he has not aged a bit and is playing at his peak, but father time does not always RSVP. Consider 2014 Peyton Manning vs 2015 Payton Manning, who went from 39 TDs and a 101.1 QB rating to 9 TDs and a 67.9 QB rating and on and off benching in a year, the same year his team flipped and offense became its weakness and defense its strength. If Davis suddenly declines to complete ineffectiveness or gets injured for the season, it could be a big blow to the defense. Mathieu could certainly decline or be injured too. Jordan and Lattimore have already declined, but could decline even further. Adebo and Taylor are young and have shown great potential but both have been very uneven from year to year, if they both have great seasons we could be strong at corner, but if they both have off years it could become a weakness with Lattimore's rust and Kool Aid's inexperience. Also it is very very very hard to say that our defense faced a challenging schedule last year. We had one of the weakest schedules in the millennium and its greatest weakness was the offenses and QBs we faced. It could be that our defense was not so great last year and just fed off easier competition. So, I think its possible the defense could struggle and get DA fired. Then Kubiak could be named interim coach, and end up with the job if he fluorishes.

2. For the second scenario you only need to look one play back, the last play of the 2023 season, when the entire Saints offense defied DA and ran for a TD in victory formation. The Saints played this down and let bygones be bygones, but I have opined that they may never have really buried the hatchet, and instead they had no choice but to play it down, because 11 starters on the field and many other players off the field were ok with defying DA, and the Saints could not financially afford to threated to cut or trade all those players because they did not have enough room under the cap to absorb the dead cap hits, and in fact they needed to instead restructure many of the players to stay under the cap. Sure, they let a few walk like Winston and Peat, but they could not financially afford to call out Ruiz, McCoy, Olave, Kamara, etc. I can't remember exactly which players were on the field or sided with Winston on social media, but many more may have sided with him behind closed doors. So, the last play of the season was mutiny on the bounty, and there were no consequences for most. So in scenario 2, the team openly defies DA again multiple times early in the season, the Saints don't have the cap room to make cuts or trades, and either DA is widely perceived to have lost the team, goes on the hot seat in the national media, and is fired for losses and lack of confidence, or DA tries to flush out defiance with depth chart changes instead of cuts, and has to give more snaps to worse players to reward loyalty and that results in losses, kind of the Malcolm Butler effect. If DA is fire for 'losing the team' that was otherwise perceived to have strong potential, and Kubiak takes over and produces a winning record, Kubiak could keep the job.

3. Derek Carr struggles or is injured early, the team gets off to a very bad start, Kubiak turns Haener or Rattler into a somewhat a promising star (not great yet but clearly enough potential to start in 2025), but its too late to save the season. In this case, the Carr contract going bad and another rough season could cost DA his job or even lead Loomis to step back and bring in a new GM. The massive cap hit of Carr's contract could scare away other coaching candidates, and good chemistry with Haener or Rattler could make Kubiak the choice as head coach. Remember when the Browns hired a minimally qualified recent interim coach for the permanent job based on chemistry with Mayfield?

4. Dennis Allen could quit. This does happen. Health scares and disappointments have driven many coaches out of the game before. DA seems healthy enough but maybe 6 years of losing would be stressful. Maybe the team will miss the playoffs but show progress on offense, then DA will have some family tragedy and decide to step away, and then Loomis will view Kubiak as a great continuity hire.

5. Dennis Allen and Klint Kubiak could reach a philosophical impasse. There could be a key season defining decision when DA and Kubiak disagree on the QB or another major decision and are clearly feuding. This has happened between coaches before. Imagine that Carr goes down to injury, Rattler takes over and plays better, Carr recovers and wants to come back, Kubiak wants to stick with Rattler and DA is loyal to Carr, DA orders that Carr be given back the job, Carr struggles on his return but the Saints sneak into the wildcard on incredible luck with Carr limping through games. Allen and Kubiak are seen screaming at each other on the sidelines, DA orders Carr to start in the playoffs and Carr throws multiple interceptions, then Rattler comes in late and almost leads a comeback but the deficit is just too much, Rattler is clearly the future and Carr is the past, and at the end of the season Kubiak makes it clear that he is leaving if DA remains the coach and Rattler asks to be traded if DA is retained.

I can see many paths to such a scenario. They are all a bit unlikely but all probably have precedents.

1. The offense starts off ok and continuously improves, but the bottom falls out from the defense. No way you say? Consider that the best player on our defense, Demario Davis, is a 35yo linebacker. So far he has not aged a bit and is playing at his peak, but father time does not always RSVP. Consider 2014 Peyton Manning vs 2015 Payton Manning, who went from 39 TDs and a 101.1 QB rating to 9 TDs and a 67.9 QB rating and on and off benching in a year, the same year his team flipped and offense became its weakness and defense its strength. If Davis suddenly declines to complete ineffectiveness or gets injured for the season, it could be a big blow to the defense. Mathieu could certainly decline or be injured too. Jordan and Lattimore have already declined, but could decline even further. Adebo and Taylor are young and have shown great potential but both have been very uneven from year to year, if they both have great seasons we could be strong at corner, but if they both have off years it could become a weakness with Lattimore's rust and Kool Aid's inexperience. Also it is very very very hard to say that our defense faced a challenging schedule last year. We had one of the weakest schedules in the millennium and its greatest weakness was the offenses and QBs we faced. It could be that our defense was not so great last year and just fed off easier competition. So, I think its possible the defense could struggle and get DA fired. Then Kubiak could be named interim coach, and end up with the job if he fluorishes.

2. For the second scenario you only need to look one play back, the last play of the 2023 season, when the entire Saints offense defied DA and ran for a TD in victory formation. The Saints played this down and let bygones be bygones, but I have opined that they may never have really buried the hatchet, and instead they had no choice but to play it down, because 11 starters on the field and many other players off the field were ok with defying DA, and the Saints could not financially afford to threated to cut or trade all those players because they did not have enough room under the cap to absorb the dead cap hits, and in fact they needed to instead restructure many of the players to stay under the cap. Sure, they let a few walk like Winston and Peat, but they could not financially afford to call out Ruiz, McCoy, Olave, Kamara, etc. I can't remember exactly which players were on the field or sided with Winston on social media, but many more may have sided with him behind closed doors. So, the last play of the season was mutiny on the bounty, and there were no consequences for most. So in scenario 2, the team openly defies DA again multiple times early in the season, the Saints don't have the cap room to make cuts or trades, and either DA is widely perceived to have lost the team, goes on the hot seat in the national media, and is fired for losses and lack of confidence, or DA tries to flush out defiance with depth chart changes instead of cuts, and has to give more snaps to worse players to reward loyalty and that results in losses, kind of the Malcolm Butler effect. If DA is fire for 'losing the team' that was otherwise perceived to have strong potential, and Kubiak takes over and produces a winning record, Kubiak could keep the job.

3. Derek Carr struggles or is injured early, the team gets off to a very bad start, Kubiak turns Haener or Rattler into a somewhat a promising star (not great yet but clearly enough potential to start in 2025), but its too late to save the season. In this case, the Carr contract going bad and another rough season could cost DA his job or even lead Loomis to step back and bring in a new GM. The massive cap hit of Carr's contract could scare away other coaching candidates, and good chemistry with Haener or Rattler could make Kubiak the choice as head coach. Remember when the Browns hired a minimally qualified recent interim coach for the permanent job based on chemistry with Mayfield?

4. Dennis Allen could quit. This does happen. Health scares and disappointments have driven many coaches out of the game before. DA seems healthy enough but maybe 6 years of losing would be stressful. Maybe the team will miss the playoffs but show progress on offense, then DA will have some family tragedy and decide to step away, and then Loomis will view Kubiak as a great continuity hire.

5. Dennis Allen and Klint Kubiak could reach a philosophical impasse. There could be a key season defining decision when DA and Kubiak disagree on the QB or another major decision and are clearly feuding. This has happened between coaches before. Imagine that Carr goes down to injury, Rattler takes over and plays better, Carr recovers and wants to come back, Kubiak wants to stick with Rattler and DA is loyal to Carr, DA orders that Carr be given back the job, Carr struggles on his return but the Saints sneak into the wildcard on incredible luck with Carr limping through games. Allen and Kubiak are seen screaming at each other on the sidelines, DA orders Carr to start in the playoffs and Carr throws multiple interceptions, then Rattler comes in late and almost leads a comeback but the deficit is just too much, Rattler is clearly the future and Carr is the past, and at the end of the season Kubiak makes it clear that he is leaving if DA remains the coach and Rattler asks to be traded if DA is retained.

All very unlikely. Allen's retiring at some point in the future is the best probability with someone within the staff taking over ... after the Rooney Rule requirements are met, of course.

Barring some tragedy befalling Dennis Allen, I don't see any scenario where Kubiak replaces Allen during the season as was suggested earlier. That is what I was addressing. I doubt any of us would want anything bad to happen to DA or someone close to him. Er, maybe that sinner guy. haters gonna hate.

All very unlikely. Allen's retiring at some point in the future is the best probability with someone within the staff taking over ... after the Rooney Rule requirements are met, of course.

Barring some tragedy befalling Dennis Allen, I don't see any scenario where Kubiak replaces Allen during the season as was suggested earlier. That is what I was addressing. I doubt any of us would want anything bad to happen to DA or someone close to him. Er, maybe that sinner guy. haters gonna hate.

Dennis Allen's defenses with the Raiders ranked 28, 29, and 32 in the league. I don't see it as very unlikely that Dennis Allen could post a bad defense if things go wrong, he has done so the majority of his seasons as a head coach. With the Saints, he benefitted from a culture led by Sean Payton and managed to assemble a strong veteran defensive core. As that core ages out and the culture of Sean Payton fades, nobody knows if the Saints defense will remain strong or not. Certainly throughout the league there is a long history of many respected defensive coordinators and defensive minded head coaches whose defenses have been very strong some years but also have had off years as well.

Allen had bad defenses with the Raiders because his talent pool sucked. He had no say on the roster with Al Davis having just died the previous season and Mark Davis making all the calls.

So, if Davis, Jordan, Mathieu, and Lattimore all decline due to aging, the defensive talent pool here could take a nose dive if younger players don't develop to replace them.

Do you have any documentation that Allen had 'no say' on the Raiders roster rather than the typical amount of input most non-GM head coaches have? Al Davis was clearly a strong headed GM but I don't know that his son was known as such. Reggie McKenzie was the GM and picked DA to work together.

Also, did DA really control the roster that made the Saints defense good recently? It seems like our core was acquired under Payton and Loomis. It seems like DA probably had more control of the 2012-2014 Raiders rosters than he had of the Saints defensive core that was built from 2017-2021 before he took over, and its unclear long term if his influence will build a winner or not. Recent defensive draft picks and free agents have been a mixed bag, the core predating DA's head coaching tenure has been the strength. If we keep drafting players like Turner and Foskey, we might be wanting to phone Mark Davis for better advice.

I never said that Allen had anything to do with acquiring the Saints defensive talent.

As for Demario and Mathieu, both are coming off banner years and I see no reason why they suddenly hit some imagined wall that you seem to wish exists to tarnish anything that has to do with your hated Loomis. Hopefully both Jordan and Lattimore rebound from injuries.