New Orleans Saints head coach Allen ranks last among his peers

Dennis Allen is in for a very important year with the Saints, and it’s a season where he’ll need to perform. Outside opinions and views on New Orleans aren’t exactly positive right now. USA Today contributor Jarrett Bailey of Touchdown Wire released his rankings of NFL coaches on Thursday morning, with the New Orleans head coach coming in at the very bottom of the list. Here’s what he said.

Dennis Allen is the head coach’s version of “sitting on a whoopee cushion.” The Saints have been awfully boring and directionless since Sean Payton retired. They’re 16-18 over the last two seasons and are in quarterback purgatory as Derek Carr is clearly not the future. The Saints’ best option would be to finally blow it all up and start rebuilding in 2025. That would be three years later than they should have done, but better late than never.

Allen was asked after OTAs on Wednesday about a lot of outside talk about the Saints and their prospects for this season, to which he responded, “I don’t care about the expectations outside of this building.” From a grammar standpoint, he clearly meant that he couldn’t care less, and that is the general belief within the organization as well.

Interestingly, Sports Info Solutions put together their model for the Saints season and it came out much more favorable than Vegas’ odds. They’re predicting 10.7 wins versus betting sites’ 7.5. New Orleans has been close many times, but they haven’t been to the postseason in three years. We know they can probably get 8 or 9 wins total, but they’ll actually have to beat better teams to get that extra win they’ve been missing.

The Saints can’t miss the playoffs this year, and close finishes just aren’t enough. Whether that leads to a changing of the guard or not, there are some things about the team that inspire cautious optimism, and it will be up to New Orleans to prove they won’t end up in mediocrity again.