The Saints Should Fire Dennis Allen Immediately
Have you ever been so sick that you wanted to die?
So sick that when you fell asleep, you weren’t sure if you ever actually were asleep? So sick that the surreal fever dreams blurred the line between the physical misery of consciousness and the hellish visions of your slumber?
But then you woke up, and you felt great. You sweated it out. The fever broke. The virus was gone.
Saints head coach Dennis Allen is such a virus. The 2022 season is that fever dream.
The latest nightmare in this sickening hellscape of a season is a blown 13-point lead to the wispy remains of Tom Brady, dooming the Saints’ shot at winning the worst division in football. Statistically, it was one of the worst losses in NFL history:
But the misery began long before the world credited Brady and his Fraudulent Buccaneers with a win that was all but gifted to them by the Saints’ incredible ineptitude in all phases of the game. In a season in which the Saints wore their wonderful 1967 throwback uniforms, their play has mostly been evocative of those mismanaged teams of a bygone era.
At least, we thought it was bygone.
2022 is a season in which Mark Ingram II butt-farted out of bounds a full yard short of the first down, for absolutely no reason, on a crucial fourth quarter drive, setting off a chain of events that led to this column and the crushing end of the team’s playoff hopes.
It’s a season in which star running back Alvin Kamara has turned into an irrelevant fumbling machine.
It’s a season in which the team’s best players suffer what we are told are minor injuries, only to never be seen or heard from again.
It’s a season in which Chauncey Gardner-Johnson – the human embodiment of Saints Twitter – was discarded for a single parade route Stink Bomb.
It’s a season in which the Saints have been unable to make any clutch plays, commit dumb penalties and turnovers every single game, and are, generally speaking, undisciplined and unprepared.
This is nearly the same roster Sean Payton had last season (and with the addition of stud rookie WR Chris Olave, I’d argue it’s actually better), when exactly none of these things were a problem. So what’s the difference?
Dennis Allen. He’s the difference.
He’s the virus that has infected our beloved franchise. He was a great defensive coordinator and for that we salute him, but I’m afraid this pathogen has run its course.
I’d argue that the Saints’ historic and embarrassing 17-16 loss to the Bucs is actually a good thing. If the franchise is going to improve, it needs Dennis Allen to keep failing. If the Saints are to ever recapture the glory we enjoyed with Sean Payton and Drew Brees, we need Dennis Allen gone.
Even though it was obvious to me the moment Kamara fumbled against the hapless Panthers in week three, it should’ve been obvious to everyone that DA wasn’t up to snuff when the team no-showed for 90% of the Falcons game in week one.
The 2022 Saints were never good. They fumbled, bumbled and stumbled at every crucial moment. The only thing they’ve been exceptional at this season is snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
Mickey Loomis and the Saints brain trust hired Dennis Allen to maintain the winning culture, but instead they got a cheap cover band that hit all the wrong notes.
Peter Parker hung up the spidey suit, and instead of Miles Morales, we got the pudgy guy who dresses up in a Party City Spider-Man costume and harasses tourists for photos in front of the TCL Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard.
We got counterfeit goods. Genius is not easily replicated, after all.
But alas, in life, everything is a gift. We had to endure this torturous, un-fun NFL season so that we could get DA out of our system. The fever dream is almost over; it’s time for Gayle Benson to cut Allen a fat buyout check and let him fade away into the West Texas dust, never to be spoken of within the Greater New Orleans area ever again.
After the horrors of the Bucs loss were exhibited to a national audience on Monday Night Football, any outcome other than DA getting shit-canned would be shocking and irresponsible.
Sure, if the team somehow rallies, wins out, and takes the NFC South crown, I’ll gladly eat my entire foot. But at no point in the season have the Saints shown consistent improvement, or even any consistency at all. It’s been this way for 13 weeks. It’s not changing, and you’re delusional if you think it will.
Dennis Allen should be fired immediately. Why delay the inevitable?
Some will say it’s a bad look to fire a coach in the middle of his first season. This is New Orleans – since when do we give a fuck about what other people think, or about being classy? This is football, we should only care about winning. Under Dennis Allen, there hasn’t been enough winning, or any sort of upward trajectory to indicate that winning is around the corner. There is no upside to keeping him for a second season, or for a single second longer than right now.
There’s no face to save. The 2022 Saints are an embarrassment to the culture Gayle Benson and Loomis seem to value so much. Right now, if the Saints were a Scooby-Doo villain, Fred would remove the mask to reveal that we were actually the Falcons the entire time. We even adopted their heinous black helmets!
It’s time to #FireDennisAllen…and hire the next great coach. Because that coach is out there, somewhere. If it takes suffering through a wasted season under DA to find this person, then so be it.
Remember – everything is a gift.
