Former New Orleans Saints Pro Bowl LB Jonathan Vilma joined Arizona Cardinals insider Kyle Odegard for an exclusive interview with SportsLens to discuss a range of topics, including the buzz around the black and gold and some familiar faces.
The revival of Drew Brees’ broadcasting career
With Brees returning to the booth for this season’s set of Christmas Day games—Pittsburgh Steelers vs. Kansas City Chiefs and Houston Texans vs. Baltimore Ravens—streaming exclusively on Netflix, his longtime teammate and current Fox Sports’ color analyst, Jonathan Vilma, shared his thoughts on Brees’ upcoming shot at redemption.
Vilma emphasized the amount of pressure that players of Brees’ stature are faced with when they begin their careers in front of the camera and shared some advice for his former quarterback: “But I would say one: the fans are always uber critical of the play by play when calling the games, right? So, if you know that they’re going to hang on to your every word whether it’s good or bad, you just go out and be relaxed and call it.”
When asked whether he feels Brees can address his weaknesses by reviewing the tape from his first stint on TV, Vilma pointed to the future first-ballot Pro Football Hall of Famer’s work ethic: “Drew, I know that he is a workaholic. I know he watched his tape 20 times over on how he wants to improve, etc. And so, what I see from Drew coming in the second time around, from whatever happened at NBC, I know he’s going to be very natural. I know he’s going to be much more relaxed. I know that he’s going to really just enjoy it.” He stressed the importance of the Super Bowl 44 MVP letting his unmatched football IQ lead the way: “If I’m Drew Brees, let that come out. Just go out, be natural, be relaxed. And look, if you flub something, move on, right? If you mess something up, who cares? Because it’s three hours of football. It’s meant to be fun. It’s not meant to be perfect. Just go out and enjoy it.”
Another quote from Vilma on Brees that Saints fans will enjoy: “...at the end of the day, there was nobody better than Drew and it may be a little biased, but there was nobody better than Drew at that quarterback position. And I know people reading will think it’s Tom Brady, but I don’t care, I’m biased!”
What went wrong for New Orleans post-Brees-Payton?
Vilma disagrees with the notion that a complete reset should have taken place following the departure of the two most prolific icons in franchise history, instead giving credit to the All-Pro-studded defense that was one of the league’s best at the time.
The general belief surrounding the Saints was that they were just a QB away from being contenders after Brees announced his retirement in 2021, but Vilma feels the two-sided narrative they faced afterwards was unfair: “So it’s like, how are you going to at one time say, well, the defense is really good and they can just get a few pieces and then now come back and say, oh, they should have just dismantled the whole thing. Alright, some of those guys were a little older and at some point, you do want to move on, but I would argue that they shouldn’t have done a wholesale change.”
However, Vilma did stress the need for the Saints to find success in the draft if they want to turn things around. He noted that it’s been an area of concern for New Orleans in recent years, pointing to the first-round selections of edge rushers Marcus Davenport and Payton Turner as picks that haven’t panned out and have set the team back. Vilma cited the later stages of future HOF DE Cam Jordan’s career as an example of how consistently whiffing in the draft can significantly impact future roster construction:” Cam Jordan’s a great example. He’s always been a great player, always relentless, great effort, etc. You drafted two or three guys. In that period, none of them really panned out. So, it’s like, how can I get rid of Cam Jordan? He’s still our best defensive end and we don’t have anything to replace him. We thought we were getting something in the draft, and we didn’t. So, when you look at it from that perspective, they tried, it looks like they tried and they were trying to make sure that they had a nice succession plan, and it just didn’t work out.”
Luckily, the emergence of the Carl Granderson-Chase Young duo has created more opportunities for Jordan and the rest of the defensive line as they continue to finish the season strong. Luring Young back for a second season in the Big Easy should be one of the top priorities this offseason and could allow the Saints to address another position of need via the draft or free agency.
Amid a disastrous season for the black and gold, Odegard asked Vilma if he thought now would be the right time to finally pull the trigger on a total rebuild, to which he was adamant on the value of keeping a handful of experienced leaders on the roster throughout this rough patch: “...absolutely have to keep two, three, four key veterans that, yeah, they’re past their primes, they may rotate in and out, they may be a backup, whatever it is, but they’re going to continue with the culture because the Demario Davis of the world, the Cam Jordans or the Tyrann Mathieus, they’ve known success a lot of their career. This is foreign to them, being .500 in consecutive seasons and just not looking like themselves. What is natural to them is being contenders, winning the division, contending in the playoffs...if you just fill this team up with young players, they could be as talented as they want but you don’t know if they’re going to be leaders. And that’s always the tricky part where if you don’t have a nice mix of solid veterans, yeah, they’re past their primes, but they’re bringing along the young guys, not just play wise, professionally to be professionals, to then lead this team into the next 10 years.” It’s highly likely that the listed veterans will return for the 2025 season, so New Orleans needs to nail the upcoming NFL Draft and bring in some promising prospects for them to mentor.
Is Aaron Glenn the best fit to be the next head coach of the Saints?
The biggest question surrounding the 2025 Saints is who will take the reins as the team’s next head coach, prompting the question of who Vilma believes would be the best fit for New Orleans: “I like what I’ve seen from Darren Rizzi so far as an interim coach, bringing more energy to the team, holding the team accountable, making sure that they play. If they’re going to move on from Darren Rizzi, they had a coach who’s done a phenomenal job in Detroit now in Aaron Glenn. He was there with the Saints under Sean Payton. I like that hire because Aaron Glenn is about developing players. He’s about structure, organization and not that other coaches aren’t, but you can see proof in the pudding of what he’s done in Detroit. And it’s not with a bunch of superstars at all. It’s with fourth-round guys, fifth-round guys, backups to the backups that are playing and playing well.”
Having played a season in New Orleans as a cornerback in 2008 and later serving as the team’s defensive backs coach from 2016 to 2020, Aaron Glenn’s connection to the Saints is glaring. Prior to joining the Detroit Lions as a defensive coordinator, Glenn played a key role in the development of players like Marshon Lattimore, C.J. Gardner-Johnson, Vonn Bell, and Marcus Williams. It’s been reported that people within the facility think extremely highly of Glenn, and he was even interviewed for the open head coach position in 2022.
Vilma added, “There are going to be some really good players that may not stay on the team. But three, four years from now, like you see in Detroit, that didn’t happen overnight. That took four years. And there was a point where people were calling for Dan Campbell to be fired. All of a sudden they start to win a few games, they get hot. Then last year they got really hot and now this year they’re on a roll. So you gotta preach patience and allow the coach to do what he does best and Aaron Glenn, he does a phenomenal job of developing the players, but you have to give them time and if the organization is going to buy into that and buy into Aaron Glenn and what the vision is going to be four years from now, then I think it’s a great hire. If they move on from Darren Rizzi, I think that’d be the next best option.”
Which candidate would you like to see the Saints consider if they ultimately decide Darren Rizzi isn’t the long-term solution?
