Dennis Allen has missed the playoffs in each of his first two years as the Saints’ head coach, but he’ll be back for Year Three, and his boss says it’s important to be patient with what Allen is trying to build.
Saints General Manager Mickey Loomis defended Allen today, naming Chuck Noll, Bill Belichick, Tom Landry and Bill Walsh as coaches who struggled early in their tenure but had Hall of Fame careers.
“The easiest thing to do is look at the results and say, ‘Oh no, we’ve got to have a change.’ You’ve got to look beyond that,” Loomis said. “What are the reasons why we were 9-8 instead of 13-4? It’s collective, it’s the players, it’s the coaches, it’s me, it’s the personnel staff, our roster, it’s variables sometimes we don’t have any control of. My assessment is Dennis Allen is a good coach. With Sean Payton we went 10-6 the first year, but then we were 7-9, 8-8, I heard some of the same noise, but at the time I knew we had a good football coach. I think sometimes the hard thing to do is be patient and recognize some of your other shortcomings and get those fixed. That’s what we’re doing.”
The NFC South has been a weak division the last two years, and the Saints have failed to capitalize on that and make the playoffs. That has to be viewed as a major disappointment, even if Loomis insists that it’s not an indictment of Allen’s coaching.
