General manager Mickey Loomis made his weekly appearance on WWL Radio with Mike Hoss on Tuesday evening, addressing the obvious with trading Marshon Lattimore and firing Dennis Allen. Loomis did not speak with the media following the move, so besides the statement it's the first time we actually hear from him. Loomis said it's only been recently that talks happened around Lattimore.
Loomis said, “I think really it’s just been the last week when there was some speculation about him being traded, given our record, you know, that’s gonna spur calls and we had a number of them over the last, you know, four or five days.”
Trading Lattimore gave the Saints a several draft picks for next year's draft, getting a 3rd Round, 4th Round and 6th Round pick from Washington in exchange for him and a 5th Round pick. The 6th Rounder was the one that the Saints used to acquire John Ridgeway III. Loomis looks at it as moving up in the draft. The fallout from moving on from him is the dead money tacked onto the salary cap, which comes to just over $36 million.
“It gets complicated because there’s acceleration from bonuses that were amortized and some things like that, but yea, I mean, listen, we don’t – it’s, you know, you said it right. It’s $18 million over the next two years, each year, that we’ll be able to use elsewhere, but let me just say this, Marshon has been a fantastic player for us. It was a great draft pick. You know, he was a defensive rookie of the year the year that we drafted him, ‘17, and made the Pro Bowl a number of times. He’s a fantastic player. He was a good teammate and, you know, I’ve got nothing but good things to say about Marshon. Unfortunately the last couple years he’s had some soft tissue injuries to deal with and a couple other injuries to deal with, but he still is, I believe, one of the better corners in our league and Washington is getting a good player for their playoff push here and their run, so I wish him nothing but the best, I really do. It was just, you know, ultimately it came down to a deal that I thought was, you know, good for us, good value for us and that’s why we did it.”
When it came to Dennis Allen, Loomis reiterated much of what was said in his statement, but expounded on it. He also addressed the column on the players and the parking.
“Look, I think Dennis Allen is a fantastic football coach, and I think anybody in our league who would talk about him thinks he’s a fantastic football coach. He is. I think in this case, look, the circumstances created the record. That’s just the truth, and a lot of people don’t want to hear it. I mean, we get silly things written, like, ah, the players aren’t parking in the right spots. I mean, that’s ridiculous. Players have been parking out there for the last 15 years, you know, because we’ve got construction going on. We’ve got 100 more employees than we had 10 years ago. That’s just silly, and to equate that with discipline is silly, too. I mean, we’re the 8th – going into this last game we were the 8th fewest penalties in the league. That’s more of a comment on discipline than where a player parks, for crying out loud, but it just gets right back to what stares at you right in the face is that we’ve had an abnormal amount of injuries, including to our quarterback, and we haven’t been able to overcome that, and so that puts pressure and stress on the organization and ultimately it was cause for a change.”
Loomis did not address the team on Monday, leaving that to Darren Rizzi. He thought he did a great job talking with the team, the media and describing some thing he wanted to do differently. The goal is to hopefully jumpstart the back half of the season.
"I think he’s a pretty obvious choice, given his experience, his role as a special teams coach, which you just described, you do deal with, you know, almost every player on the team when you’re in that role, so it’s a voice that our players have heard before. He’s used to being up in front of a large group of players and presenting and look, he’s got a great personality and a great positive attitude at all times, and, you know, look, he was a candidate, you know, when we hired Dennis Allen. He was one of the candidates and had a really strong performance in his interviews, so I think it was an obvious choice.”
“Rizzi’s always got this effervescent personality. He’s got kind of this fighter mentality, and you feel that even when you’re just talking in a regular conversation with him, you know, and so I think that was positively received by our team and certainly by our staff and players in a really, really, really difficult circumstance.”
Loomis said that the team is not going to be real active with a coaching search right now, but will when the season is over. He's focused on what's in the building and brought up the fact that he's been through the process before with facing adversity back in 2005. He also talked about the state of the team and obviously the frustration fans are feeling.
"It’s no fun losing games. It’s, you know, I can’t describe to you, as bad as our fans feel and the things that, you know, they feel, believe me, we’re all feeling 10 times worse, but you can’t just wallow in that. You have to get up off the mat and show some fight, and that’s true for every single person in this building, and so we’re gonna see what we’ve got over the next eight weeks.”
Loomis added that he doesn't question the effort of the coaching staff and players, something Dennis Allen also said. However, it hasn't been good enough yet and has to improve to equal wins. He brought up how they've lost their top two receivers, top two corners, their three interior lineman and quarterback this year. The Saints know there's been several games in which the game came down to a final possession and have had a chance to win the game but didn't.
"The other team made some plays, and so that’s how close it is, you just cited it, it’s not that far from being 5-4 as opposed to being 2-7 and yet it’s 2-7, I mean, we’ve got to own that. That’s what we are.”
Wednesday is a new era for the Saints, and they have three critical months to evaluate where they're at, where they're going to go and how they're going to get there.
