The New Orleans Saints on Tuesday were the last team to hop off the NFL's coaching carousel, as they officially introduced team defensive coordinator Dennis Allen as their next head coach. The 49-year-old will be replacing his longtime boss, Sean Payton, who stepped away from the Saints two weeks ago after 16 years at the helm.
Allen won't find his new role too unfamiliar. From 2012 to 2014, he served as head coach for the then-Oakland Raiders, which entered rebuild mode after purging a handful of poor contracts. But Allen's tenure wasn't successful -- midway through his third year, he was fired with an 8-28 overall record. And former Raiders executive Amy Trask was somewhat surprised by the Saints' decision to promote Allen, considering how his Oakland stint ended.
"The experience in Oakland, there was some very, very strong reaction in the locker room to his coaching and his style -- and throughout the organization," Trask told the Maggie and Perloff show on Tuesday. "When you're the head coach, you're not simply involved in the locker room and with players. You're involved throughout the organization. There was a regular path to my door with people coming in to discuss his manner of, I'll use 'leadership' loosely.
"But, as I said, we can all grow up on the job. We can evolve and get better, and I hope for Saints fans that he has... Will he succeed in his second stint as a head coach? I don't know. None of us know... I'll just tell you that, nothing could've better expressed my reaction than those eyeball emojis, because I was in that office, listening to the players who he coached, come in and talk to me about his coaching..."
Allen, who spent the past seven seasons as the Saints' defensive coordinator, will certainly have his hands full as Payton's successor. According to Spotrac, the team is projected to be $76 million over the cap in 2022 -- the worst mark in the NFL -- and with Jameis Winston eligible for free agency and Drew Brees comfortable in retirement, New Orleans' quarterback situation is unresolved.
During his introductory press conference on Tuesday, Allen told reporters that he intends to approach the role with his own coaching personality, saying in part, "I want to take the lessons that I've learned, I want to build upon those lessons, and I want to create my own legacy here." Last season, the Saints' defense ranked fourth in average points allowed (19.8), seventh in average yards (318.2), and tied for 10th in total takeaways (25).
The entire football conversation between Trask and Maggie and Perloff can be accessed in the audio player above.
You can follow the Maggie and Perloff Show on Twitter @MaggieandPerl and Tom Hanslin @TomHanslin.