Saints’ woes start at the top of the organization

There are no shortage of opinions as to why the New Orleans Saints have stumbled towards the midway point of the 2023 NFL season with a 3-4 overall mark.
While the offense showed signs of life in working in a no-huddle look that it found great success with, the game will be marred by one of the most heartbreaking moments in franchise history.
Tight end Foster Moreau, a former LSU player who signed a free agent contract with the team this offseason, had a potential game-tying touchdown drop.
It’s a gut punch in itself. To add to it, Moreau has overcome so much adversity in recovering from cancer just to be on a football field this season.
That unfortunate moment couldn’t have happened to a worse person, and no one is showing him anything but empathy after it.
I feel for Moreau, honestly. However, the woes this team has faced thus far this year fall well beyond his hands.
There are many places fans would like to place the blame.
It’s popular to start with offensive coordinator Pete Carmichael, whose conservative play calling has left much to be desired with an offense that features deep threat receivers like Chris Olave and Rashid Shaheed.
He’s certainly partly to blame, at least. But it doesn’t end there.
Another option is big money quarterback Derek Carr, who himself might be the victim of Conservative Carmichael’s lack of creativity in the booth.
It’s easy to stop there. But, let’s dig deeper.
Head coach Dennis Allen never was the right man for the job, but I get where he was hired for the sake of continuity after Sean Payton’s departure.
The idea of continuity is an interesting one, and leads us to where I think most of the blame should fall.
And that, my friends, is on general manager Mickey Loomis.
Loomis absolutely was the architect of the franchise’s lone Super Bowl win in 2009 and should be thanked and documented accordingly for doing what many deemed the impossible in helping build a world champion in New Orleans.
However, he is also to blame for wasting the prime years of the franchise’s best-ever player in Drew Brees and for the current state of the franchise.
Annually, the Saints play a game that I like to call “salary cap gymnastics” in which they restructure contracts to ensure they can fall below the NFL’s salary cap threshold for the following season.
Loomis’ alleged wizardry has the franchise in a position where 19 players have a dead cap hit of at least $10 million or more.
Highlighted among those are Cam Jordan’s $52 million in dead cap dollars, Derek Carr’s $60 million in dead cap dollars and both Marshon Lattimore and Ryan Ramczyk having dead cap hits of over $40 million.
To put it bluntly, roughly a third of the roster is completely untradeable due to Loomis’ dedication to continuity.
For a franchise that has desperately needed a refresh since its last NFC championship game appearance, it’s an impossible position to be in.
His desire to “run it back” has done little to help the Saints long-term. To further exacerbate the problem, Loomis prefers to trade up and not move back in the NFL Draft.
As a rule of thumb, trading up takes picks away from a franchise while trading back adds assets to the warchest.
Potentially, the Saints will have two of the NFL’s top 35 picks in the 2024 draft that is loaded with talent.
Logic dictates that a team desperately in need of fresh and cheap assets should collect more of them.
That, however, will likely not be the case. Loomis’ track record is to trade up to get one piece as opposed to several.
And with where the franchise is now, it’s unsustainable.
To finish the thought off, I believe that until the Loomis Era is done in New Orleans this franchise will never move forward and recover.
And as a lifelong fan of the Saints, it’s a heartbreaking place to be.