If someone were to list the top defining moments of the Saints' Sean Payton era, somewhere near the top you'd list the moment that Mickey Loomis picked him for the job in the first place.
After 16 often offense-rich seasons, all but one of which featured legendary quarterback Drew Brees, it'd be easy to forget that betting on a first-time head coach was anything but the safe option for the GM, then entering his 6th season in New Orleans.
Loomis detailed one example that illustrates that point on WWL Radio this week: The late Tom Benson was on the fence at the time when it came to hiring the impressive but unproven Payton.
Why? The Saints owner was looking for a bit more experience in the hire, which came at a pivotal time for a franchise and city that was still early in the recovery from Hurricane Katrina and moving on from the middling Jim Haslett years.
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Loomis was entrusted to make the final call in 2006, but much like with Gayle Benson this time around, the GM kept the team's owner apprised on the search with regular updates and conversations.
"I’ll never forget being in his office and telling him the direction I was thinking, and [Benson] was like ‘well, what about this other guy?’ " Loomis recalled, laughing. "And he liked Sean. It wasn’t that he didn’t like him. He just, I think, favored a little more experience at the time."
Listen to Mickey Loomis' full interview on SportsTalk with Bobby Hebert, Kristian Garic and Mike Detillier in the player below. Can't see the embed? Click here.
In hindsight, the decision was obvious. But it's also a script that would mirror the start of many a "team owner exerts a bit too much control" horror story. It's one that Loomis safely averted by staying firm in his choice. The GM was comfortable enough in that moment to disagree with his boss, and Benson did what was sensible -- but also what is probably difficult for the person at the top of the Saints pyramid. He conceded the point.
Still, Benson made one thing clear: "He said, ‘well, it’s your butt, Loomis,’ " the Saints GM recalls. "He didn’t say it that way, though.”
It's unlikely the late Benson spent much time questioning the decision after it was made. The former team owner passed away in 2019, so he can't speak to the point himself. But Loomis said the line of questioning felt more like it was intended to test his conviction and commitment to Payton as his pick, as opposed to any kind of directive to look elsewhere. And in fairness to Benson, he'd always give Loomis credit for that confidence during the prosperous years ahead. Payton led the team to its first Lombardi Trophy in the 2009 season, and finished with a head coaching record of 152-89 and with nine postseason appearances. That run also included a slew of frustrating playoff exits and near misses in recent years, featuring a variety of circumstances that don't need to be rehashed.
But Benson's question wasn't the only thing that could've derailed the Payton to New Orleans train. The now-retired coach recalled during his farewell press conference that he was interviewing for the Green Bay Packers' opening prior to that of the Saints. He thought he'd be the pick for Green Bay after an encouraging interview with the late Ted Thompson. That was the case even as he arrived in New Orleans to meet Loomis for the first time.
"I just thought, when I met Mickey, 'man, I like this guy. He's got a really big task ahead of him,' " Payton said.
Payton still remembers checking his flip phone all that day and waiting for a Wisconsin area code to pop. When it did, that interaction ended with Payton throwing the phone down in frustration. The Packers had decided to go in a different direction.
"It was the best thing that happened, and sometimes you don't have any control over that," Payton said. "And beyond just hiring me, ... we've had disagreements multiple times and yet we've always been in concert."
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The Packers' decision was ultimately to hire Mike McCarthy, ironically the current coach of the Cowboys who found himself at the center of a rumor mill suggesting he could be replaced by Payton down the road. That won't be happening, at least not this season, with Payton stating definitively he won't be coaching in 2022. He appears committed to testing the waters in broadcasting.
McCarthy and Payton both won Super Bowls in their tenures with the teams that hired them, though it was the latter who walked out the door on his own terms. The Packers hiring decision in 2006 was what opened up the door for the Saints and Loomis, who had identified Payton as a head coaching option after perusing the league's collection of canned candidate interviews. Each is 30-minutes long and features an NFL coach interested in pursuing a head coaching job. The questions were all the same, but Payton's answers stood out, Loomis recalls.
He stood out in his subsequent head coaching interview with the Saints, which can last upward of 6 hours. He stood out early in his coaching career, an offensive wiz who cut his teeth under coaching legend Bill Parcells, whom still serves as a mentor to Payton this day. One good example of that mentorship came in 2012, with Payton suspended from the NFL and coaching his son's youth football team. That year was the premise of the recently debuted Netflix movie, Home Team.
In one scene Payton, as portrayed by Kevin James, calls up former NFL head coach Bill Cowher for tips on how to combat the single wing offense. The coach admits the movie is only loosely based on the events that actually occurred, but that scene wasn't far off. The biggest difference: It was Parcells on the other end of the line in real life.
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Perhaps that mentorship is why Sean Payton's decision to retire on his own terms, while leaving the door open for a return down the road, so closely mirrors Parcells' exit from the Giants in 1990.
Regardless, Loomis' choice to bet on Payton was a clear, defining moment in Saints history. Loomis was calculated in that hiring decision, as he is with everything he does. As the coach said, the pair didn't always agree, but they did always pull and push in the same direction. As Payton noted during his retirement press conference, he and his longtime GM are very different people. One thing, specifically, that Payton chose to air his grievances over?
"He walks slow. It bothers me," Payton said. "I want him to pick it up."
But even that critique is a perfect example of the calculated Loomis persona. Because the slow-walking is an active decision, or at least it was back when it began. It was one of the tips Loomis picked up during his 15 years in the Seattle Seahawks organization prior to joining the Saints. Among those tips were that good leaders listen a lot more than they speak, and that walking a half-step slower than everyone else exudes confidence. That point could be debated -- particularly if you want to make a majority of your flights on time -- but it also serves as a metaphor to distill the Saints' approach in the 2022 head coaching search.
The Saints were the last team onto the head coaching carousel. The Saints were the last team to hire a head coach, which they announced this week with the promotion of Dennis Allen from defensive coordinator. The Saints never seemed rushed, even as Doug Pederson, one of the candidates interviewed, was hired as the head coach of the Jacksonville Jaguars. In the end, the Saints took their time, and made sure they made the decision for the right reasons.
They didn't need to peruse the NFL's interview library this time. Sixteen years ago, if there were 10 head coaching jobs available, the Saints would've been No. 10 on the list, Loomis said. This time around, it's the Saints who had to cull intriguing potential names with interest in the job simply to have a manageable pool to choose from.
"We have enough good eyes and experience in our building," Loomis said. "We know what we need and what we want. We had a vision for what a head coach of the New Orleans Saints looks like, and so we didn’t need to go outside and have somebody else tell us what we needed."
Will Allen end up as a positive future case study for an in-house hire taking over for a coaching legend? (Think: 49ers replacing Bill Walsh with George Seifert)
Or will it end up as a cautionary tale? (Think: Giants replacing Tom Coughlin with Ben McAdoo)
Only time and football games will tell that story.
This time it was Gayle Benson sitting to hear updates on the search. She spoke glowingly about Allen as he was introduced as the head coach, and it fees unlikely there will be any similar "told you so" moments we'll find out about a decade down the road.
We'll never know how things might have turned out if that conversation in 2006 had ended with a different outcome, because Payton turned out to be the right choice, at the right time, for the right reasons. As Loomis pointed out multiple times, if you can name multiple presidents and/or popes over a single head coaching run, it's probably because something pretty special happened.