It's certainly not a usual scenario for a GM to be on the phone call with another team's head coach just a matter of days before their teams match up in the regular season, but nothing about Thursday's Saints-Broncos showdown is usual.
Speaking on WWL this week, Saints GM Mickey Loomis said he'd spoken with now-Broncos coach Sean Payton last week to check in. The former Saints head coach is visiting this week for the first time since stepping away after the 2021 season.
"It’s not a revenge game," Loomis said. "Sometimes you play against a team you were with and you have bitter, angry feelings about that team, you want to beat them because of that, that’s not this game with Sean, Sean loved his time here with the Saints, he has love for the city and the organization, but ... it’s like playing against your brother, you know, you want to beat him, and we feel the same way. It’ll be a dogfight. He’ll pull out all the stops and we have to be prepared for that.”
Listen to the full, exclusive interview with Saints GM Mickey Loomis in the player above. Can't see the embed? Click here.
The Saints GM said the Week 7 game wasn't part of the conversation, it was more of a general check in between two football people who spent the better part of two decades working side by side and finding frequent success.
Success has been more difficult to find on both sides of that call since Payton's departure. The Broncos had a bit of an awkward start between Payton and then QB Russell Wilson and his team landed at 8-9 in Year 1. They're 3-3 to this point behind rookie Bo Nix.
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The Saints have had seasons of 7-10 then 9-8. This season they got off to a thrilling 2-0 start but are now looking for answers to correct a four-game skid that's featured an array of injuries and a recent rash of substandard tackling. The 51 points allowed in Week 6 to the Bucs is the most in any game since Dennis Allen took over as defensive coordinator.
Loomis addressed that situation, as well as how the balance of this season weighs on his assessment of the head coach's performance.
"Results matter, they do," Loomis said, "but I think one of the things that I think good organizations do is that, man, you look beyond the results, what’s the reason for the results, and how do you fix the reasons that keep you from winning, and it’s not always about the head coach, sometimes it is, but it’s not always about that, it’s about a lot of different variables, a lot of things are involved in winning and winning a particular game or winning a lot during the course of a season, so that’s what we’ll — we’ll look at that when the time comes, but the time is not right now. We have a lot of games left and we have a talented team and, you know, we’ll see where it goes from here.”
MORE FROM MICKEY LOOMIS
On Spencer Rattler's debut
“I thought it was a good first outing for him, and moreso from the standpoint of man, I thought he was poised, he kept his composure, things weren’t going our way early and it’s easy to, you know, try to do too much and yet I felt like he stayed within the offense, made some plays both with his legs and his arm and I thought it was really encouraging overall. I thought that, you know, I had mentioned this, they made some adjustments at halftime and, you know, did a lot of bringing pressure and so that made it more difficult in the second half, particularly when you get behind like that and you have to throw it every down, but I thought it was a good outing. I thought our coaches did, our offensive coaches, did a really good job of designing the gameplan that took advantage of his skillset and look, we’re looking for more development, more growth in this next game.”
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On RB Kendre Miller
“We’re excited about him getting healthy and maybe having an opportunity to contribute to us in the next few weeks, so look, he’s a talented player. He hasn’t been able to stay on the field and get on the field because of some soft tissue things, primarily, but he’s ready to roll right now and I like his progress.”
On struggling run defense
“I think a lot of what you said, there’s some truth to it. Teams are gonna try to run on us until we prove that they can’t, and you know, that’s incumbent upon the players and coaches and our organization to come up with answers for that, so you’re not wrong, but I also think this, I think that, you know, first of all, you don’t ever want your leading tacklers to be your DBs, I agree with that 100%. That’s not a good sign, but I also think this, too, we want players that are tough, right, and we want players that’ll go out there even when they’re not feeling great, when they’re a little banged up or a lot banged up, and I think there's some guys on the field that are banged up and they’re tough, they’re playing through it, but maybe they’re not quite as capable as they would be if they were fully healthy. So we’ve got to overcome that, right, that’s just part of … being a part of the National Football League, so you said it, we’ve got to play better defense, we’ve got to find a way to stop the run, and that’s incumbent upon each person to look at themselves and say hey, I can play better.”