Loomis backs Allen, Carr after latest playoff miss

Katherine Terrell, ESPN Staff WriterJan 17, 2024, 06:51 PM ET
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METAIRIE, La. — New Orleans Saints general manager Mickey Loomis defended Saints coach Dennis Allen and quarterback Derek Carr in his season-ending news conference Wednesday.

Loomis said some changes needed to be made after the Saints missed the playoffs for the third straight season, leading to the departure of longtime offensive coordinator Pete Carmichael, wide receivers coach Kodi Burns and senior offensive assistant Bob Bicknell on Tuesday.

The Saints also allowed running backs coach Joel Thomas to leave and take the same position with the New York Giants.

“That’s the first standard … of a successful season: make the playoffs,” Loomis said. “And so if you don’t make the playoffs, then I don’t think you can say you’ve had a successful season. So, we didn’t have a successful season this year.”

Loomis said it would be lazy to place all of the blame on the head coach or quarterback for the results of the season, and came prepared with statistics to defend Allen.

Loomis read off a sheet of paper that listed the records of coaches such as Hall of Famers Chuck Noll, Tom Landry and Bill Walsh, all of whom did not have winning records in their first few seasons.

He also cited Bill Belichick, who did not have a winning record as Cleveland Browns head coach until his fourth season.

“So I think the easy thing to do is just look at the results and say, ‘Oh no, we’ve got to have a change.’ You got to look beyond that,” Loomis said. “What are the reasons why we were 9-8 instead of 13-4? And look, it’s collective. It’s the players, it’s the coaches, it’s me, it’s our personnel staff, our roster. It’s variables sometimes that we don’t have any control of. My assessment is Dennis Allen is a good coach. And again, 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 and so I think sometimes the hard thing to do is to be patient and recognize your other shortcomings and get those fixed, and that’s what we’re doing.”

Allen is currently 16-18 in his two seasons as Saints’ head coach and 24-26 overall, including his 8-26 tenure as coach of the Oakland Raiders from 2012 to ’14.

Loomis was asked whether Allen’s Raiders stint, which ended when he was fired four games into the 2014 season, factored into the evaluation.

“Yeah, it matters. It matters. Where you are at matters, the experience. I think having any head-coaching experience is valuable,” Loomis said. “You learn a lot of things your first time around. Again, you have to look beyond just the record. What was the circumstances when he was in Oakland? They basically were way over the cap. They had to tear down the team and the quarterback situation. There was a lot of variables there and he was given a short amount of time.”

Carr, who was drafted by Allen in 2014 while Allen was with the Raiders, signed a four-year deal worth up to $150 million with the Saints last offseason.

Carr played in all 17 games, with some of his best performances coming during the Saints’ 4-1 stretch to end the season. However, he sprained the AC joint in his shoulder against the Green Bay Packers in Week 3 and also left two games with concussions.

“I think he did a lot of good things,” Loomis said. It wasn’t perfect, for certain, but I think he did a lot of good things. I think that he was hurt for a good portion of this season, probably more so than he would let on or that was out there, so I felt like he kind of hit a stride toward the end and we did collectively too, and he’s not the only player or position that was the case.”

Allen said earlier in the offseason that Carr got too much criticism this year after he was booed at times by the home crowd. Loomis echoed that response Wednesday.

“Yeah. I mean that’s the nature of the quarterback position though, right? You get more credit than you probably deserve and you get more blame,” Loomis said. “It’s what I said at the beginning — is that the easy and lazy thing to do with results is to blame the coach or the quarterback. That’s what fans do. That’s what the media does. … I mean, I hear ex-players doing it and they don’t really know.”

Although the Saints haven’t made sweeping changes, Loomis said there were things everyone could do to be better moving forward. He specifically addressed some of those things in a meeting with the players at the conclusion of the season.

“It’s been a while, but I felt like there were some things that needed to be said to the players, just like I think there’s things that need to be said to the coaching staff and to our football operations staff,” Loomis said. “I think maybe we’ve gotten a little too comfortable over the last few years, and so I want to make it uncomfortable.”

Loomis said the message to everyone was about living up to a certain standard moving forward.

“Everybody says, ‘Are you willing to do what’s necessary to win?’ They all raise their hand, but sometimes we’re not doing the things that are necessary to win,” Loomis said. “And that’s on me. That’s on me 100 percent. I’ve got to hold our guys to a standard to do the things necessary to win. And I think that I probably let that slip a little bit over the last few years, and so we’re going to get that recalibrated, and so that’s my message to our entire building. It’s not just to the players or just the coaches; it’s to our entire building.”