New Orleans Saints interim coach Darren Rizzi got his tenure off to a terrific start when the New Orleans Saints beat the Atlanta Falcons on Sunday. The 20-17 win snapped a seven-game losing streak by the team, causing Dennis Allen to be fired early last week by the team.
Allen became just the fourth coach in the 58-year history of the Saints to be fired during the season. He was the first to be let go during the year since 1980.
Counting two mid-season resignations, Rizzi was just the sixth interim coach in franchise history and their first since 1996. This does not count the ludicrous and unfounded witch hunt conducted by Roger Goodell against Sean Payton and the Saints in 2012.
Among Rizzi's chief challenges will be to continue the momentum his team started last week. If the history of interim coaches is any indication, especially with the Saints, then his task will be a monumental one.
Rizzi is the fourth of the six New Orleans interim coaches to win their debut game. After that, the odds are stacked against him historically. None of the other five Saints interim coaches won more than one game, with all five combining for a winning percentage of .161.
J.D. Roberts (1970), Ernie Hefferle (1975), Dick Stanfel (1980), Wade Phillips (1985), and Rick Venturi (1996) were the other interims in Saints history. Each won only one game. Together, their record was an abysmal 5-26. Only Roberts, with a 1-6 record after taking over in 1970, was retained as the head coach into the next season.
After their first game, Saints' interim coaches have fared even worse. Roberts, Hefferle, Stanfel, Phillips, and Venturi had a combined 2-24 record after completing their first game. That's a putrid winning percentage of .077.
None of those five interim coaches won their second game on the sidelines, going a combined 0-5. In those games, the Saints were outscored by an average of 33-17. New Orleans held only one of those opponents to less than 30 points while scoring more than 16 points in only one of those matchups.
That distinction belongs to Dick Stanfel's Saints in 1980 during a 38-35 overtime defeat to the San Francisco 49ers. In that game, New Orleans owned a 35-7 halftime lead. The 49ers came roaring back in the second half behind legendary QB Joe Montana to get the win. It remains the largest regular season comeback win in NFL history.
After an NFL team makes a mid-season coaching move, it isn't unusual for that team to ride an emotional wave and play well for a week or two. Almost as often, that emotional wave will flatten out and the team will revert to being the flawed squad that got their coach fired in the first place.
Since 2000, there have been 47 head coaches replaced during the season. Only 11 of those previous replacements, just 24%, were retained as head coaches by their teams the following year.
Over the previous 12 years, there have been just three of 24 interim coaches promoted into the full-time role. Antonio Pierce (Raiders) is the only one of 16 interim coach in the last seven years to keep the head job.
Darren Rizzi promised that the Saints would fight, play hard, and be fun to watch. New Orleans was all three in his first game against Atlanta. Whether Rizzi gets serious consideration to be the head coach in 2025 will largely be determined by whether the Saints continue to be all three through their final seven outings.
