Since Dennis Allen has been head coach of the Saints, the team has had 23 losses in the past three seasons. He's 18-23 in New Orleans and fans are obviously not happy with the way things have played out in 2024 with the 2-5 start. For perspective, his predecessor Sean Payton had 24 combined in the final four seasons of his tenure and had 23 in his first seasons. The issue here is that there's still 10 games left to play.
During last year's end of season press conferences last year, things were supposed to be different for New Orleans. It's a fresh start. It's a chance to wipe the slate clean and improve, and we heard a lot of things that were needed to at least buy into it.
"It hasn't been good enough. I have to do better job, and I accept that responsibility," Allen said back then. "I understand that this is a production based business. I've been in this business a long time. I do think we played more consistent in the last stretch of the season and I think our record indicated that."
"We've got to look at what are we going to do differently. We are all part of the problem, now we've got to figure out what we're going to be to be part of the solution."
General manager Mickey Loomis was also supposed to set the tone here, addressing certain things that needed to be said after saying the organization had become a little too comfortable over the last years. He said he made it uncomfortable.
"I've had meetings with the team before," Loomis said Wednesday during that end-of-season news conference. "It's been a while. But I felt like there were some things that needed to be said to the players, just like I think there's things that need to be said to the coaching staff and to our football operations staff, and that's going to be said. I think maybe we've gotten a little too comfortable over the last few years, and so I want to make it uncomfortable."
This is why Saints fans are seemingly at their wits end, and it feels like the team is in that same boat. Allen said it himself that he knows this is a results-based business. There's something that's clearly amiss in the building, which is something that I wrote about following the embarrassing loss to the Broncos. Change is pivotal for New Orleans, but do they even know what needs to change and how to do it or hoping that the injuries magically fix deeper issues? The Saints are in a lot of trouble, and there's a lot of questions on whether they know how to fix it or not.
It's about to get worse for the Saints too, because we're at the point where the support is diminishing. Can you blame them? Not even a little bit, and even Loomis himself said that the team had to win and perform well to get fans back. In that presser, Loomis also said that if the team is not meeting the bar, "That's on us," and said that if he were in the stands some last year, he would have booed a couple of times.
I went back through all of the losses the Saints have had over the past three seasons to just analyze Allen's opening statements. There's obviously a lot more to unpack here, but this is a start. Are there commonalities? Is is rinse, wash and repeat or lip service? Here's what I found and all the quotes to go along with it.
Dennis Allen's Opening Statements Following Losses
- The phrase 'better' comes up 32 times. Variations like 'Better job' comes up 13 times and 'Play better' was used 5 times.
- 'Opportunities' comes up 12 times.
- 'Disappointed' and/or 'Disappointing' comes up 14 times.
- 'Missed' comes up 6 times.
- 'Chance(s)' comes up 6 times.
- 'Mistake(s)' comes up 4 times.
- 'Work' comes up 4 times.
- 'Improve' comes up 3 times.
- 'Inability' comes up 3 times.
- 'Accept', 'Acceptable' and 'Unacceptable' comes up once each.
2024
vs. Broncos: “Look, I think as coaches and as players, we have to do a better job. We have to do a better job throughout the week of preparation. We’re making mistakes that we shouldn’t be making and allowing guys to get free. Again, part of the run game is that we have to do a better job at winning the line of scrimmage. That’s where it all starts. We have to do a better job of getting off the blocks, and we have to do a better job of tackling. I guess as coaches and players all alike, we’ve got to figure it out.”
vs. Bucs: "I am thoroughly disappointed in the game. It was not acceptable. It was not good enough. It wasn’t good enough from a coaching standpoint. It wasn’t good enough from a playing standpoint. We’ve got a lot of getting better to do, and we’ve got a short time to do it. We need to get some guys healthy, but we’ve got to play better than we did today in all areas.”
at Chiefs: "I thought we got outplayed in the game today, got outcoached. They did a good job. We really couldn’t get a whole lot going on either side of the ball. Offensively, we really couldn’t get anything going in the run game or in the passing game. Defensively, I felt like we made too many mistakes early on in the game. I don’t think we tackled as well as we needed to. I think for the first time this year, I felt like we didn’t play the way we are capable of playing. I was disappointed in that. I think as a coaching staff, we have to look back at what we need to do better and try to improve and put our guys in better positions to be successful.”
at Falcons: “It sucks to lose a game like that. Those are the kind that rip your heart out. But I know we've got a good football team in that locker room. Now, we have to play better. We can't spot a team 14 points, a good team, and expect to win those types of games. The fact that you come back and put yourself in a position to win that tells me that we've got a good football team. But we have to be better, we've got to play better, we've got to coach better. There's a lot of things we have to improve on. We'll go back to work tomorrow, and we'll get ready to go to Kansas City on Monday night.”
vs. Eagles: “Disappointing loss for us. I don’t think we played as well as we are capable of playing, yet you have to give those guys credit. They beat us today, and we had our opportunities. I don’t think we played, obviously, as well on offense as we had played the first two weeks. Give their defense credit. Defensively, we just gave up too many explosive plays. That was really the key to the game is the explosive plays that we gave up and really kind of our inability to move the ball offensively.”
