Sean Payton's success was the exception, not the rule, for Saints

Fans of the New Orleans Saints witnessed their former coach Sean Payton lead the Denver Broncos to a 6-2 record on Sunday, putting him at 200 career wins in his NFL coaching career. The Broncos pulled out a 28-24 win over the Kansas City Chiefs with 15 unanswered fourth quarter points and a last second goal-line stand for their fourth win in a row. Meanwhile, the 2-5 Saints were on a bye after losing their fourth out of five games last Sunday in Paris. Making matters perhaps more bitter for New Orleans fans was the fact that former Saints defensive lineman Malcolm Roach made the game-saving play for the Broncos with a fourth-down sack on Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes.

Sean Payton was the head coach of the Saints from 2006 to 2020. In 15 years on the sidelines, he owned a 152-89 regular season record with nine playoff appearances, eight division titles, three conference title game trips, and a Super Bowl XLIV championship. Since becoming coach of the Broncos in 2023, Payton has a 58-37 regular season record with two trips to the playoffs and a division title along with an appearance in last year's AFC Championship Game.

Payton walked away from the Saints, resigning after the 2021 regular season. After a year away from coaching, New Orleans traded his rights to the Denver Broncos. In exchange, the Saints got a 2023 first round draft choice, Bryan Bresee, and a 2024 second round draft choice, eventually swapped for Kool-Aid McKinstry. Bresee is out for the season with a knee injury and McKinstry has struggled at times. Generally though, both are good players and important to the defense.

It isn't what the Saints got for Payton that should anger fans. The fact that their former coach has done so well somewhere else while New Orleans has floundered is particularly galling. In their sixth year since Payton the Saints have a 29-46 record, a winning percentage of .387. Dennis Allen was the first choice to replace Payton. That failed miserably, with Allen bumbling to an 18-25 record from 2022 before being fired nine games into the 2024 season. Next up was Kellen Moore, hired in 2025 for his first ever head coaching job. In Moore, the Saints thought they were getting another offensive-minded coach for their rebuild. Through nearly a season and a half, that has most decidedly not been the case.

Moore's teams are 8-16 so far, with a winning percentage of .333 worse than Dennis Allen's results (10-14) through the same stretch of his tenure. Expected to be a much-improved team on offense in Moore's second year, the Saints instead are incapable of running the ball or protecting quarterback Tyler Shough with one of the most ill-prepared weekly game plans in the league. As a result, Kellen Moore is considered on the hot seat, with most fans expecting (hoping?) he doesn't last this entire season. If/when the Saints do move on from Moore, then it's back to the coaching drawing board. Don't assume that New Orleans will get it right. More often than not historically, they have not.

Only two of the twelve head coaching hires in the Saints 60-year history have a winning record. Sean Payton and Jim Mora were those two. Mora owned a 93-74 record (.557) and four playoff appearances in eleven years with the franchise without a postseason win. Payton, Mora, Jim Haslett (10-6 in 2000), and Dennis Allen (9-8 in 2023) were the only ones who pulled off a winning season, with just Haslett outside of Payton and Mora taking the Saints to the playoffs. Of the other eight coaches, only Bum Phillips and Dick Nolan even had one year of .500 football. That's simply not a good track record.

Kellen Moore would seem to need a monumental turnaround to keep his job with the Saints beyond this season. Irony being as cruel as it is, Saints fans witnessed Payton record his 200th career regular season victory last Sunday with another franchise. That and Moore's current struggles only highlight the historic futility New Orleans has had on the sidelines, making one a skeptic if the next choice will be the right one.