How long of a leash does Dennis Allen have with Saints ownership?
Who is going to be coaching the New Orleans Saints in 2024? Could Dennis Allen return after struggling to reach (much less hold on to) a winning record in either of his two years as their head coach?
That’s no sure thing, but some recent scuttlebutt suggests the Saints are at least hesitant to consider making a move from Allen just yet. The latest buzz comes from ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler, who shared what he’s hearing in a back-and-forth with his colleague Dan Graziano:
“I don’t think the Saints want to make a change on Dennis Allen, but another losing season would mark two in a row, which wasn’t the norm in the Sean Payton era (though he did have a stretch of three consecutive 7-9 seasons from 2014 to ’16). It still needs to be seen how much grace New Orleans’ front office and ownership is willing to apply.”
Honestly it’s odd that the situations would be compared; Payton won his goodwill along with a Super Bowl XLIV championship and a record-setting run with Drew Brees, helping the quarterback not just reinvent himself after a career-threatening injury but build a Hall of Fame resume.
Allen fixed Rob Ryan’s mess of a defense, which was no mean feat. Then he developed it into an elite unit. That was enough to give general manager Mickey Loomis and team president Dennis Lauscha the confidence to back Gayle Benson’s decision to hire him despite his historically-poor run a decade earlier with the Raiders. But when you look at how the team’s fortunes have gone since Allen was promoted to head coach, there’s little logic behind sticking with him.
An admittedly injury-ridden Saints team limped out of their Week 14 bye last year with a 4-9 record. They gave Allen free reign to recruit Derek Carr, his franchise quarterback of choice, investing $60 million guaranteed in a passer whose last team ditched him and whose free agency experience was lukewarm at best. What does Allen have to show for it a year later? The Saints are coming out of Week 14 with a 6-7 record. They’ve improved by just two wins.
There’s no valid reason for sticking with Allen. His defense — his defense, the unit he’s drafted and developed and filled with handpicked veteran free agents — is eroding by the week. What was supposed to be the strength of the team has allowed the seventh-most rushing yards and tied for the third-fewest sacks in the NFL this season. They can’t stop the run or rush the passer. Allen’s offense still can’t score points between Carr panicking in the red zone and rookie kicker Blake Grupe shanking 29-yard field goals. Visiting fans are taking over the lower bowl in the Caesars Superdome and Carr is being met with boos whenever he jogs off the field after another stalled-out drive. The team is in a bad place even after a lopsided (yet unconvincing) win over a division rival last Sunday.
So we’ve got two reasons for the Saints to keep Allen. In the first scenario, they’ll outlast their rivals in the NFC South and win the division to host a home playoff game (likely against a Super Bowl contender like the Dallas Cowboys), which likely won’t go well. It’ll also drop their first-round pick in the 2024 NFL draft away from the best prospects, which could be devastating when bad trades from Loomis cost them their second-, third-, and fourth-round picks. But, Loomis can say, they did reach the postseason after falling short last year. And that’s tangible progress.
What if the Saints miss the playoffs and still keep Allen? That’s when the excuses might start rushing out: injuries to star players like Michael Thomas and Marshon Lattimore (just like last year) plus Carr, who is valiantly playing through a sprained throwing shoulder, three injured ribs, and two concussions. That’s an easy way to handwave his poor performance this season.
The rebuttal to that is the Saints having the healthiest roster in the league through the first ten weeks and still idling at 5-5 before the injuries hit. But if the Saints leadership group has seen Allen’s team get worse by week and find new ways to lose football games going into mid-December, odds are strong that Benson, Loomis, and Lauscha aren’t going to acknowledge that criticism in January. We’re still speculating here, but it would have to take something drastic to convince them that hiring Allen and committing harder to his vision for the team was the wrong move all along.
If he does return after this season, Allen will enter the third year of his four-year contract with the Saints in 2024. Carr’s heaviest guarantees extend into 2024, too. Maybe the plan all along has been to give Allen those two years with his quarterback and see if he can make something happen before kickstarting a reboot in 2025 (maybe without Loomis, the longest-tenured general manager in the NFL, leading it) once the salary cap has skyrocketed to wipe out years of financial maneuvering and cost deferments. All fans can do is stand by, see how this all plays out, and hope the team gives them a product worth cheering for.
