You don’t want to simplify things too much in a sport as complicated as pro football, but at the end of the day you are who your record says you are. And Dennis Allen’s New Orleans Saints team is looking a little too much like his old Raiders teams. Allen’s Saints fell to 3-6 on the season with an embarrassing loss to the Baltimore Ravens on Monday night, and it’s the third time he’s started a season with that record in four years as a head coach.
See for yourself. Here are Allen’s records through nine games in each of his four stints as a head coach in the NFL:
- 2012 Raiders: 3-6 (finished 4-12)
- 2013 Raiders: 3-6 (finished 4-12)
- 2014 Raiders: 0-9 (Allen was fired after starting 0-4, and the Raiders finished at 3-13 without him)
- 2022 Saints: 3-6 (final record to be determined)
So that’s not encouraging. These Saints teams are far more talented than the squads Allen worked with on the Raiders, but it’s worth noting Hue Jackson took them to an 8-8 record the year before Allen was hired. So it’s not as disparate of circumstances as you’d think at first glance.
What’s to be done about it? Nothing yet. The Saints have eight games left on their schedule and there’s nothing to suggest they’ll make a change in-season. Allen is going to ride out this year, and likely next season, too. Obviously that could change in a hurry, and it probably should — Saints owner Gayle Benson okayed the decision to jettison former New Orleans Pelicans head coach Stan Van Gundy after his one year on the job proved he wasn’t the right fit. Maybe the Saints will take a similar approach if Allen continues to lose games with what they all thought was a playoff-ready roster. We’ll just have to wait and see.
