The New Orleans Saints now find themselves in a troubling situation with just six games left to go in the 2023 NFL season. A significant investment into a new franchise quarterback was expected to help the team out of the slump they’ve been in since Drew Brees’s departure in 2020, but so far this year, that just hasn’t been the case.
A loss to the Falcons on Sunday gave the Saints a losing record, now 5-6 and losing the head-to-head battle with their rivals in Atlanta. New Orleans is 1-2 in the division, needing to play each team once more, with their only win so far being a less-than-convincing win over the 1-10 Carolina Panthers.
With one of the league’s best defenses at their disposal, plenty of skill position players, and a new quarterback on a $150 million contract, this should be a playoff team. Right now, it isn’t even close, and even if the Saints somehow scrape into the postseason as a low seed, the chances of them getting beyond the Wildcard round are extremely low.
With a mountain to climb to turn things around before the end of this year, the focus has to be on Dennis Allen’s ability to lead this team. It’s his second attempt at running an NFL franchise, and it is now the second time his team has failed to find success.
Allen had built a reputation for himself in the 2000s. He came from Tulsa as a secondary coach and started his path in the NFL as a defensive quality control coach with the Atlanta Falcons. After four years there and a promotion to a defensive quality assistant, Allen moved to New Orleans for the first time, where he managed roles both as an assistant defensive line coach and then eventually as the secondary coach.
Allen was the defensive backs coach when the New Orleans Saints won the Super Bowl in 2009, ranking third in the NFL in interceptions that season under his coaching. The unit was giving up over 300 yards a game but playing the football aggressively and forcing turnovers.
He went on to spend a year as the defensive coordinator with the Denver Broncos, and after just one season, he was nominated and hired to be the next head coach of the Oakland Raiders.
The narrative around Allen’s head coaching tenure with the Raiders has always been that he was destined to fail, given the state of the team at the time.
Long-time owner Al Davis passed away just a few short months before Allen was hired, and his son and current owner Mark Davis took over the team.
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The General Manager was Reggie McKenzie, who had no prior experience as a GM, and was given total control over hiring the next head coach of the team. Allen had only been at the coordinator level for one season when the Raiders came calling, and perhaps it was a little too early in his professional career to come in as a head coach.
The Raiders had traded away multiple draft picks prior to Allen’s arrival, and the team was in no position to win right away. They went 4-12 in back-to-back seasons, and just as Allen was beginning to put his own stamp on the roster, he was fired.
Allen was the head coach of the Raiders when they drafted Khalil Mack and Derek Carr in back-to-back rounds in 2014. He then named Derek Carr the starter, but a slow start to the year cost him his job and the team he’d been building.
It’s fair to assume that he was doomed from the very start in that role. He was working under a first-time team owner and a first-time general manager and trying to run an NFL franchise as a first-time head coach at a young age. It was a recipe for disaster, so Dennis Allen has always been given a pass.
Fast forward to his time in New Orleans, and now the same concerns are beginning to creep back in. Is Dennis Allen just not a good head coach? Let’s take a look at how things have unfolded since he took over.
In his first season in charge, the Saints went 7-10. They’ve been trying to find their way with a quarterback, and again, Allen was given a pass for the losing record as a result. Since Brees retired in 2020, the team has tried Jameis Winston, Taysom Hill, Trevor Siemian, Ian Book, and Andy Dalton.
It was Dalton who played the majority of the 2022 season under Allen, starting from Week 4 to Week 18. New Orleans averaged 19 points per game that season, with rookie Chris Olave being the bright spark on an otherwise very underwhelming offense.
Alvin Kamara managed just two rushing touchdowns all year, while Taysom Hill led the team with seven. The run game was underwhelming as a group, and besides Chris Olave’s 1,000-yard season, no other wide receiver had managed to clear 500 receiving yards.
The offense was criticized for being too conservative. Dennis Allen takes very few risks and is limiting his offense’s opportunities as a result.
Pete Carmichael has been the offensive coordinator for the Saints since 2009. He’s been working with Dennis Allen and Sean Payton for over a decade, but only now is the Saints offense struggling to score points.
Dennis Allen’s preference appears to be taking points over taking risks, and the team often opts for a conservative third downplay call and a field goal over taking a shot for a touchdown.
Saints fans don’t blame Carmichael; instead, they believe Dennis Allen is strangling the offense and forcing these dull play calls. We don’t know how true that is, but the offense’s regression is clear as day.
In 2023, the Saints are scoring less than 20 points per game once again. They rank 12th in total offense, showing that they can move the football down the field, but converting those opportunities into touchdowns is once again proving to be an issue.
Fortunately, the defense is still playing at a high level and hasn’t lost its edge since Allen moved from defensive coordinator to head coach. He hired experienced coordinator Joe Woods to run the defense underneath him but still has a firm grip on the defensive unit.
With a defense that can consistently stifle its opponents, the Saints should be winning games. Their standout performance this year was the shutout against the New England Patriots, but the team has been humiliated by teams they should never be losing to with the current strength of the roster.
The Saints have lost to Jordan Love in the first four weeks of his career as a starter. They got embarrassed by Baker Mayfield and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, then lost to C.J. Stroud despite having one of the best performances any team has had against the Texans rookie so far this season. They held Stroud to 20 points, but the offense only managed 13 and fell flat once again.
Their last two losses are arguably the worst. They lost to Josh Dobbs in just his second start as a Viking and then fell apart against Desmond Ridder and the Falcons in a game that could have been an opportunity to take sole possession of the top seed in the division.
Now, the Saints are battling uphill and need to recover the deficit if they want to earn a top-four spot in the playoffs. That means going on a good run in the next few weeks and potentially needing to clinch the division with a win over Atlanta in the last game of the season.
Dennis Allen’s preparation for games against teams the Saints should be beating has been subpar. The Minnesota Vikings game was a clear example of that. With Josh Dobbs taking control of the offense, having been in the building for barely two weeks, and Justin Jefferson out of action due to injury, the glaringly obvious threat was T.J. Hockenson.
Josh Dobbs has a known connection with tight ends, and rather than scheming to nullify Hockenson, he went for 11 catches, 134 receiving yards, and a touchdown as the Vikings won 27-19. That isn’t good enough, especially from a veteran defensive coach.
Even in the win against Chicago. Tyson Bagent, an undrafted rookie, threw for 220 passing yards and two touchdowns. The Saints picked him off three times, but the defense still allowed far too many opportunities against a bad team and allowed the game to be close when it never should have been.
Going into the 2023 season, the Saints were expected to have an easier schedule. The division is a mess right now and could have easily been the Saints to claim. No team has a positive record, but the Saints also can’t beat those teams.
They’re then scraping by teams like Carolina, Chicago, and Tennessee, all by single digits, and losing to backup quarterbacks and mediocre rosters like Minnesota and Green Bay.
This team is better than 5-6. The roster is better than 5-6, but Dennis Allen isn’t coaching the team to win games; he’s coaching them not to lose. The defense holds up well, but the offense is extremely boring, and with talent like Alvin Kamara, Chris Olave, Michael Thomas, Rashid Shaheed, and co., they should be scoring many more points.
Time is running out for Dennis Allen to get this right. He’s a great defensive coordinator, but he needs to quickly prove that he can hold his own as a head coach. He’s yet to have a winning record as a head coach of either the Raiders or the Saints, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see the team go in another direction if they don’t make the playoffs this year.
With six games to go, this team should be beating the Panthers, Giants, Bucs, and Falcons at the very least. But given the performance we’ve seen so far this year, there is zero faith in that happening.
We’ll see how it plays out, but if the Saints don’t make the postseason, I’d expect to see a new head coach in town next year.
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