The aftermath of an ugly, season-ending loss to the Carolina Panthers wasn't the time for any major determinations or declarations on the future of the Saints' roster or staff.
That said, Dennis Allen still didn't pull any punches. Changes are inevitable, particularly after a 7-10 season. That's life in the NFL.
“We’re going to evaluate everything," Allen said. "Nobody’s making any decisions on anything 30 minutes after we walked off the field. So, there’ll be time to evaluate those things and we’ll see what we need to do to give ourselves the best opportunity as we go forward.”
Some of those decisions will be made based on the magnets that get referenced often. It's how the Saints order their depth chart internally, and red magnets indicate an impending free agent. There are a lot of those magnets up on the board right now, Allen said. So what comes next?
The team must first wrap up its season internally, then will come meetings and some potentially difficult conversations. Allen said he and GM Mickey Loomis will meet at some point this week to go over what has to happen next. For a team with high expectations and back-to-back finishes outside of the playoff field, it's not difficult to understand why everything might be on the table.
"We’ll talk about a lot of different things," he said. "We’ll evaluate our program from top to bottom. And then we’ll make whatever adjustments we need to make, and then we’ll have a plan moving forward.”
Should any changes be based on performance, it seems likely the second half of the season has set up the defensive staff and roster on the positive side of those discussions. The defense finished the season with another dominating performance, even in a loss. Panthers QB Sam Darnold was held to just 43 yards passing, and they even forced a pair of interceptions that have been painfully rare throughout a year with such narrow margins.
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The offensive side of the ball feels like a different conversation. Dating back to Week 10, the Saints have each of their past 8 opponents to 20 points or fewer, a stretch of defensive dominance that hasn't been seen in New Orleans since the Dome Patrol era. The issue? They went 4-4 in those games. The flagging offense was underscored in a finale that saw a long drive for a TD on the opening possession, then zero points the rest of the way through a combination of turnovers and missed field goals.
When asked to characterize the 2022 season, Allen went with one word: Challenging.
"We obviously didn’t win as many games as we would've have liked to. I thought our guys fought and battled," he continued. "I thought they overcame some adversity. There’s a handful of games there that I feel like if we would’ve been able to make a couple of critical plays, that the outcome of those games could’ve been different and then I think we’re talking a little bit differently in here. But that’s the nature of the game that we play.”
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