SmashMouth

Something had to be done. The status quo was no longer going to cut it on Airline Drive.

You can sell stability when you win. You can't sell the "same old, same old" when you go 7-9 four times in five years.

In some respects, Black Thursday at New Orleans Saints headquarters shouldn't have come as a surprise.

You knew someone in the Saints organization was going to pay the price for three consecutive 7-9 seasons. The question wasn't if heads would roll but which ones would be chopped.

A simple exercise in deductive reasoning could have led us to the answers. Through the process of elimination we could have predicted the firings of Bill Johnson, Stan Kwan, Greg McMahon, Joe Vitt and James Willis.



It wasn't going to be Tom and Gayle Benson. You can't fire the owners, as San Francisco 49ers owners Jed York so smugly noted on Wednesday.

Sean Payton wasn't an option. You can't fire the head coach, who just signed a lucrative five-year contract extension a year ago.

And Mickey Loomis wasn't a consideration. Loomis and president Dennis Lauscha are the most secure employees at Saints headquarters.

That leaves players, scouts and assistant coaches. The players will know their fates in the weeks ahead. We know a few of them will not be back, even some with multiple years remaining on their contracts.

Ditto the scouts, who are typically under contract through the NFL Draft in late April. Payton has already hinted that changes potentially loom in the personnel department.

The only heads left to roll in the wake of the disappointing season were those of the coaching staff.

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