The New Orleans Saints are in the process of completing their biggest offensive shift in nearly two decades, and head coach Dennis Allen is excited about it.
Speaking on the NFL Report with Steve Wyche and James Palmer this week, the Saints head coach broke down the hire of Klint Kubiak to be the team's next OC and the goals for the organization as it shifts schemes.
"I really wanted to look at what was going to be the best fit for the New Orleans Saints," Allen said, "for our players that we have here and the things that we’ve got to get accomplished and I felt like Klint Kubiak was really the person of choice."
The Saints interviewed a dozen candidates for their opening in an extensive search. They were able to do that, at least in part, because they had to wait to interview Kubiak until after the divisional round of the playoffs and the hire couldn't be made official until after the 49ers played in the Super Bowl. But the links between Allen and the Kubiak tree, which reach all the way back to the early 90s at Texas A&M, were always clear.
The exact build of the new offense will remain to be seen, but it will certainly be expected to carry important tenets of the Gary Kubiak scheme that has persisted around the league, and one that Klint took over in 2021 for the Vikings. It will also have some influence from the world of Kyle Shanahan, where Klint Kubiak served as a passing game specialist in 2023.
"I feel like I’ve known this scheme for a long time and I feel like this is the best scheme that gives your players the best chance to have success that’s going in the National Football League right now," Allen continued. "I think Klint is highly intelligent. He’s an extremely hard worker. I think we’ve put together and outstanding staff with a little bit of a mixture of some older, veteran coaches that have been there, done that, with some younger, progressive mindset-type of guys and I think it’s going to be an excellent mixture for our organization.”
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The Saints had yet to announce their completed staff as of Wednesday morning, but several moves are expected to be made official in short order. The Saints moved on from eight coaches this offseason, and have already made decisions to fill several of them, including Andrew Janocko as QBs coach, John Benton as OL coach, Keith Williams as WR coach and Rick Dennison as run game coordinator. The Saints are also retaining Clancy Barone as TEs coach and are expected to promote Jordan Traylor to be an assistant QBs coach.
The new-look staff met at the facility over the past weekend, and the next steps will be resetting the deck to some extent on the recruiting trail with any necessary changes and targets to fulfill the vision for the new scheme.
"I think that’s been great for our group and I think we’ll have to continue to have those discussion as we go through this draft process … [and] free agency.”
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What will this mean for Derek Carr
“I think Derek is going to do exceptionally well. I think there was a point in time this past season where we started incorporating a little bit more of the play action passing game and I really felt like that’s where our offense started to take off. I thought that’s where Derek really started to take off. It’s interesting because, I’ve had communication with Derek throughout this process and talked to him about some of the different candidates that we were bringing in, and his brother David had played for Gary in Houston and that was David’s last year in Houston, and I was a little bit concerned that maybe that wouldn’t go over that great, and David had some really good things to say about the offensive scheme and about how he really appreciated the scheme and the things that they were doing and really enjoyed playing for Gary and felt like, look, if there’s some similarities, which I think there’s a ton, between Gary and Klint that it was gonna be a great fit. So really kind of excited about that.”
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On navigating an aging roster
“I think it’s a delicate balance, you know, because not only do these players — I’m talking about guys like Cam Jordan, I’m talking about guys like Tyrann Mathieu, I’m talking about guys like Demario Davis, we’re speaking specifically on the defensive side of the ball. Look, they can still play and they can still play at a winnable level, and it’s all those other kind of intangibles that they bring to your football team that don’t necessarily always show up on the stat sheet, but they show up in terms of the culture and the way you go about doing things. And so look, it’s a delicate balance and it’s hard because these guys have been such great players for such a long time. That’s the challenging part of this business. But as long as they can play and play at a level that allows us to be able to win, then I think they’re valuable pieces to our team.”