National Football League

Firing Dennis Allen just first step in long road back for cap-strapped Saints

Published Nov. 4, 2024 11:24 a.m. ET

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Greg Auman

NFL Reporter

That Dennis Allen would be fired by the Saints seemed increasingly inevitable, moving over the course of seven straight losses from an "if" question to a less polite "when" question as an old roster showed less and less life.

New Orleans went 9-8 last season, tied for the best record in a bad division, and the front office for years has borrowed from future cap space to squeeze as much talent onto the roster as possible in the search for a postseason presence in the post-Drew Brees world.

That hasn't happened, and might not happen in the immediate future. The Saints lost to a Carolina team that had one win all season going into Sunday, and didn't look better than that. After a promising start to the season, including 91 points in two wins, it now looks like those were an aberration. The victories came against Carolina and a Cowboys team that has struggled on defense all season.

And to look at Allen's career, what's remarkable is that he lasted two-plus seasons in a second chance. His career winning percentage is .329 — a 26-53 record that includes a rough two years and change with the Raiders. In all of NFL history, only two coaches have been allowed to coach more games with a lower winning percentage: The great Marion Campbell and Joe Bugel, neither of whom has been a head coach in the past 25 years, with shorter leashes and less patience from NFL ownership.

The Saints, as a roster, had promise on offense, with Derek Carr finishing last season on a high note and starting it much the same way. But he was lost for a month to an oblique injury, and the only two downfield threats they had, Rashid Shaheed and Chris Olave, have been significantly limited by injuries. Shaheed is done for the year with a knee injury, and Olave's history of concussions puts his season in jeopardy, too.

The past few offseasons, the Saints have found themselves in salary-cap hell, as much as $100 million over the cap, and they've gotten under largely by reworking contracts to push the cap burden to future seasons. It's the NFL equivalent of maxing out your credit cards to live the best life you can right now. The Saints still have years of getting out from under that, and the constant restructuring has kept them bound to older players who haven't been the same contributors.

Edge rusher Cam Jordan is a future Hall of Famer, but he has zero sacks this year after only two last year. Inside linebacker Demario Davis, in his 13th NFL season, hasn't had a hand in a turnover all year, piling up tackles but little else. The Saints' veteran pieces of their defensive secondary haven't made plays as they once did. The new pieces, like edge rusher Chase Young, have had only modest success.

Had the Saints not finished last season on the uptick they did, winning four out of five, Allen was probably gone then. That he was brought back for 2024 seemed in part because the salary cap was in such bad shape the job wouldn't be seen as an easy fix, putting New Orleans near the bottom of the list for popular candidates. That's still probably the same — Carr's contract is an albatross, so a new coach must either really believe in him, or be OK going with a rookie and taking on a massive cap hit to move on from Carr.

Allen was a solid defensive coordinator under Sean Payton. Allen's defenses probably solved Tom Brady and the Bucs offense better than any other in the QB's three years in Tampa. But those Saints defenders are older now. This year's Bucs-Saints game was apropos, in that New Orleans had an amazing second quarter, outscoring the Bucs 27-0, and still managed to lose the game by 24 points, struggling mightily in the other three quarters.

The expectations for New Orleans this year weren't great, enough so that some experts picked the Saints to finish last in the South, below even the Panthers. Carolina had the last nail in the coffin Sunday, pulling even with New Orleans at 2-7, and with an ugly logjam of two-win teams across the league now, the backwards race for the No. 1 pick will have more teams jettisoning their coaches and trading key players in the next 24 hours before the NFL deadline.

The Saints' trajectory is downward right now, and moving on from Allen gives them a head start to find the best candidate to take over the franchise. They haven't had a proper identity since Brees and Payton moved on, and rebranding this team with newer, younger stars will not be an easy or quick makeover. Allen tried his best, but if you watched the Saints in the past seven weeks, you knew this was coming for him.

Greg Auman is an NFL Reporter for FOX Sports. He previously spent a decade covering the Buccaneers for the Tampa Bay Times and The Athletic. You can follow him on Twitter at @gregauman.

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Greg Auman