AsylumGuido

The New Orleans Saints Should Let Dennis Allen Finish the Rebuild He Started

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Dennis Allen runs a highly aggressive scheme that is designed to be multiple, always on the attack, but simple enough that his players are always able to execute. Nick Underhill of The Advocate wrote this article about how Allen’s scheme allows him to be aggressive without sacrificing sound defense. We saw a lot of those concepts come into play this season, and that is despite the Saints going from what was supposed to be a deep secondary to an ICU in a matter of weeks. By the end of the second week of the season, the Saints had already lost their top five cornerbacks going into the year, and their 1st round pick Sheldon Rankins who was supposed to help improve the pass rush.

Allen’s unit fought through that adversity, and while at times the results were exactly what you would expect when you are playing a bunch of guys either past their prime, or who never had one at all, improvement was shown. The Saints went from one of the worst teams in the league at defending against the run to an above average one this season under Allen. And while the defense moved only from awful to mediocre, that is still a major improvement.

The reality is that Dennis Allen is still lacking some key pieces to run his scheme right, which is why he should not only be given the time to bring in those pieces, but also has earned that right. Allen was able to bring out significant improvement in the defense with a bunch of mismatched (and often misfit) toys to play with. There was a black hole opposite Cameron Jordan all season long, he never had a healthy group of NFL quality cornerbacks after the first half against the Raiders, and his linebacking unit was poor at best.

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“The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” — Winston Churchill

dizzle88

Injuries to multiple positions didn't exactly help Allen, and whilst I think we should jump at the chance to get Wade Phillips whilst we can, Allen's second half adjustments were really good.

Even when Breaux came back, he must not have been fully recovered or very rusty as he had regressed a lot.

Hopefully guys like Kikaha, Breaux, PJ williams, Damian Swann, Erik Harris and numerous others can come back and stay healthy.

I think someone who was often overlooked last season was David Onyemata, he didn't make any "wow" plays but he was solid for a late round pick.

Your bonehead creator picked a fine chapter to omit from your memory bank....let me ask you, does a machine like yourself ever experience fear? - Vegeta, DBZ

Crusader

Very good read. Thanks for posting!

halloween 65

Well since he's going nowhere we'll get to see ? By game 6 the dust should settle and we will see what we got? I think Paytons job depends on how he performs.

SmashMouth

Or he could just bring in Wade to help.

Danno

There was a good reason Denver and Oakland hired him, even though we was one of the youngest in the league at that time. He was only 38 years old when Denver made him their DC, and 39 years old when Oakland made him a HC. Thats barely out of diapers as far as NFL coaches go.

He has a lot of potential to become a great HC one day. A few more years of seasoning with Payton and Company and I could see him becoming a great HC one day and perhaps even our next HC.

K Major

I like what Dennis did this year. 6 CBs injured before the 2nd week and he still managed to improve the defense from historically bad to 27th. The real improvement was the second half adjustments. Our D was solid (for the most part) in the second half of games. That to me is the sign of a good coach. Give him another year or 2 more to start bringing in his type of players before judging him too much.

We were 17th in PPG given up in the second half at 11.3.

K Major

Looking at our roster, I don't see the personnel to run a 3-4 (Wade type defense) and it would be another 2 years before Saints had proper draft picks/players in place to be successful.

Square pegs ... round holes.

SaintFanInATLHELL

Why would Wade Phillips agree to that? Wade has been a head coach in this league. He is an extremely successful DC.

I think everyone has forgotten that there are currently 6 open head coach positions. So exactly why would Wade take a demotion (or even a parallel transfer) to come here when he now has the opportunity to run the show again?

SFIAH

SmashMouth

He's in the waning years of hid coaching career. He has a ring already as DC. He has stated he wants to stay in Denver. But if he does not, why not have him come in and help with Allen in charge? And why not adapt a system to fit the players at hand? What is Allen doing with Anthony, a LB that was practically ROY?