The New Orleans Saints have seen significant change in the span of 48 hours, the first coming with a had coach firing and the second with a star player traded.
So what did Mickey Loomis have to say? The Saints GM joined Mike Hoss on WWL Radio to hit on a variety of topics, which we'll break down below.
Listen to the full interview in the player above. Can't see the embed? Click here.
On Dennis Allen's firing
The Saints head coach was fired Monday after a loss to the Carolina Panthers, a 7th consecutive loss that marked the longest losing streak since 1999. The Saints GM addressed that, and also criticism from NOLA.com columnist Jeff Duncan prior to Week 9 that pointed to player parking issues a sign that discipline was lacking within the building.
"I think Dennis Allen is a fantastic football coach, and I think anybody in our league who would talk about him thinks he’s a fantastic football coach. He is. I think in this case, look, the circumstances created the record. That’s just the truth, and a lot of people don’t want to hear it. I mean, we get silly things written, like, ah, the players aren’t parking in the right spots. I mean, that’s ridiculous. Players have been parking out there for the last 15 years. ... We’ve got construction going on. We’ve got 100 more employees than we had 10 years ago. That’s just silly, and to equate that with discipline is silly, too. I mean, we’re the 8th – going into this last game we were the 8th fewest penalties in the league. That’s more of a comment on discipline than where a player parks, for crying out loud, but it just gets right back to what stares at you right in the face is that we’ve had an abnormal amount of injuries, including to our quarterback, and we haven’t been able to overcome that, and so that puts pressure and stress on the organization and ultimately it was cause for a change.”
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Did you address the team?
“No, just [interim head coach Darren Rizzi]. He did a great job. We talked about what his message would be beforehand and I thought it was well received, and look, any time that you have a change in the middle of the season, you’re gonna have, you know, some emotion involved with that and hopefully that emotion creates a little positive bump and I felt like, you know, that happened yesterday, is that I thought Rizzi did a great job talking with the team, talking with the media, describing some things that we wanted to do differently, just to hopefully jumpstart the back half of the season.”
When will the head coaching search start?
“That’s not something that we’re gonna be real active with right now. There’s plenty of time for that when the season ends. Our focus has got to be on our team, our players, our coaches, our staff, and look, you learn more about who you have and who the people are that you’re working with in adversity that you do when things are going well. As much as Katrina and that whole experience was difficult back in ‘05, we learned a lot about, you know, the people that were with the Saints at that time and it drove a lot of decisions, you know, after that, and so look, this is adversity, this is tough. It’s no fun losing games. It’s, you know, I can’t describe to you, as bad as our fans feel and the things that, you know, they feel, believe me, we’re all feeling 10 times worse, but you can’t just wallow in that. You have to get up off the mat and show some fight, and that’s true for every single person in this building, and so we’re gonna see what we’ve got over the next eight weeks.”
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LATTIMORE TRADE
The Saints moved on from Marshon Lattimore this week, trading their former first round pick to the Commanders for three draft picks, the highest being a third rounder. Loomis said the deal just made sense and wishes Lattimore the best.
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"Marshon has been a fantastic player for us. It was a great draft pick. You know, he was a defensive rookie of the year the year that we drafted him, ‘17, and made the Pro Bowl a number of times. He’s a fantastic player. He was a good teammate and, you know, I’ve got nothing but good things to say about Marshon. Unfortunately the last couple years he’s had some soft tissue injuries to deal with and a couple other injuries to deal with, but he still is, I believe, one of the better corners in our league and Washington is getting a good player for their playoff push here and their run, so I wish him nothing but the best, I really do. It was just, you know, ultimately it came down to a deal that I thought was, you know, good for us, good value for us and that’s why we did it.”
Have you been getting calls throughout the season?
“I think really it’s just been the last week when there was some speculation about him being traded, given our record, you know, that’s gonna spur calls and we had a number of them over the last, you know, four or five days.”
Are you satisfied with the compensation?
"We’re adding picks in the draft and we’re moving up in the draft is kind of the way I look at it, and that gives us a good amount of picks in this next year’s draft."
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ON THE REST OF THE SEASON
The Saints have their next three games at home sandwiching a bye week, and while draft positioning is the team's friend right now, ending the losing skid has to be the top priority.
“I think it starts with, hey, how do we prepare on Wednesday, tomorrow. You know, how do we approach, you know, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and then the game Sunday and look, we just need to play some good football, and actually there was some good football played during this stretch, but just not enough, and here’s one thing I don’t question: I don’t question the effort of our coaching staff and our players. I think the effort and fight has been there, but it hasn’t been good enough yet and it needs to improve for us to be able to get a win.”
On Darren Rizzi
“Rizzi’s always got this effervescent personality. He’s got kind of this fighter mentality, and you feel that even when you’re just talking in a regular conversation with him, you know, and so I think that was positively received by our team and certainly by our staff and players in a really, really, really difficult circumstance.”