After Saints head coach Dennis Allen held his final team meeting of the season Monday, the entire room was cleared so general manager Mickey Loomis could meet with players only to discuss the team’s culture.
Loomis’ speech came a couple of weeks after Allen lectured the players about commitment, both to one another and to the organization.
Translation: Not everyone in the Saints’ boat was rowing with the same effort and in the same direction.
In the wake of the midseason swoon when the Saints lost consecutive games to the Falcons, Vikings and Lions, some segments of the locker room splintered, according to multiple sources. The key word here is “splintered.” The vast majority of the team remained committed to the task at hand and supported Allen and the direction of the organization, as evidenced by the team’s strong finish to the season.
But when adversity hit in the form of a three-game midseason losing streak, a few dissenters emerged. Some, according to sources, didn’t like their roles. Some felt certain players, including quarterback Derek Carr, were not being held accountable by the coaching staff for mistakes on the field.
It should be noted that this is not all that uncommon. The high-stakes pressure of the NFL can create fissures in a locker room. Losing only exacerbates the dynamic.
In the wake of the disappointing campaign which resulted in a third consecutive playoff-less postseason, team officials have set out to readjust mindsets, re-establish priorities and reset the mission.
Loomis said on his weekly show on WWL radio that his players-only meeting was rare for him, but that he was “trying to set the tone for what we expect going forward, and I thought it was well received.”
Allen also addressed the issue during his end-of-season press conference Monday.
“Everyone in the building is part of the culpability — all of us, coaches, players, everybody,” Allen said. “And so we have to look at what do we need to change. … There’s things that have to be different.”
Staff changes certainly will be part of the offseason makeover. Personnel changes to the roster are also inevitable, as they are every offseason.
But the first change needed to be implemented between the ears rather than between the lines. The Saints’ workplace culture had devolved. It didn’t happen overnight. But gradually the standards that had been set in the building over the years were not being met.
As the season progressed, attention to detail waned. Some players were late to meetings. At some road games, buses to and from the stadium rolled late. At one point in midseason, an audit revealed dozens of players had not been using their Microsoft tablets to study the team’s digital playbook during their off times from the facility, an issue that was quickly addressed and corrected by team leaders.
Another example of this ennui: An increasing number of players and staff began parking in the smaller public parking lot at the team’s training facility rather than the larger, gated lot reserved for them on the side of the facility. Some players even regularly parked in the front lot’s four handicapped spots. At times, this created an unnecessary shortage of parking at the facility that team officials said would be addressed but apparently was either neglected or ignored.
On their own, these might seem like minor issues. But collectively, they create an environment that encourages inertia, disorder and lowered standards, a football version of the broken windows theory — that if a window in a building is broken and left unrepaired, all the rest of the windows will soon be broken, leading to neglect, misbehavior and even criminal activity. The principle was developed to explain the decay of neighborhoods, but it is often applied to criminology and work and educational environments.
“There’s definitely something that has changed, and to me, it feels more like a drift of a change rather than an intentional taking a turn in another direction,” veteran offensive lineman James Hurst said. “Most of the (cultural) things that were in place when I got here are still here. That’s the challenge of Mickey, the challenge of D.A. (Allen) and the challenge of the players to find out what’s missing, or what changed, or have we become too content, are we taking things for granted?”
When news reports started to emerge down the stretch that Allen’s job was safe and “cultural tweaks” were needed, the organizational strategy for the offseason became clear.
“Our mindset needs to be different,” Allen said. “We’ve had a lot of success around here, and I think sometimes you can kind of get a little comfortable with that. …There were times (this season) when I felt like, man, we need to commit a little bit more to doing the things that we need to do to be able to win.”
Asked if he thinks the Saints’ 4-1 finish to the season was reason for optimism heading into the offseason, tight end Foster Moreau’s measured answer was revealing: “It depends upon a player’s individual resolve, who wants to use this offseason to grow and get better and win and re-commit to a winning culture.”
The good news for the Saints is they have been here before. Loomis and Allen were around for the 2014, 2015 and 2016 seasons, when the team found itself in a similar .500-like rut after a wildly successful run from 2009 to 2013.
Distraction and complacency led to three consecutive 7-9 seasons. Then-head coach Sean Payton lost his way, and his indifference suffused the Saints’ entire football operation.
Things got so bad that veteran tackle Zach Strief felt the need to confront Payton and address some of the issues he saw undermining the team in a sit-down meeting in the coach’s office.
“There were things that used to be important to Sean that suddenly didn’t seem to matter anymore, things that he used to be concerned about that he no longer was,” Strief said at the time. “I told him there were problems. We’re doing stuff that we don’t do. We don’t start meetings eight minutes late. We just don’t. We never have. It sets a bad precedent.”
To his credit, Payton accepted responsibility for the fall-off and didn’t make excuses. He didn’t reinvent himself. Instead, he just refocused and recommitted himself to the job.
However, after three consecutive losing seasons, more had to change than just Payton’s attitude. The Saints hired Jeff Ireland to oversee their drafts and placed a renewed emphasis on procuring smart, self-motivated, high-character players. Payton also overhauled the defensive and special teams coaching staff. The result: a historic draft in 2017 and four consecutive double-digit-win seasons from 2017 to 2020.
Today, the Saints find themselves in a similar position with similar challenges.
Late in his press conference Monday, Allen was asked if he had a message for Saints fans. His answer referenced the 2014-2016 seasons, albeit indirectly.
“I would say much like the New Orleans Saints have done over the past, call it 20 years, 15 years, we’ve battled through some hard times, and we’ve come out on the other side of the storm,” he said. “And I fully expect us to come out on the other side of the storm again.”
The difference then, of course, was that the organization had a pair of generational leaders in Payton and Brees to lead the resurrection. Time will tell if Allen and Carr have what it takes to do the same.
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