Saints release Dennis Allen: What's next for New Orleans, including Derek Carr, Cameron Jordan and other veterans?

The bill finally came due on Monday in New Orleans at the Saints Firing of head coach Dennis Allen After a seventh straight loss, the team is 2-7 in the 2024 NFL season. Given the public admission by some of the team's most established leaders and widespread expectations of a third straight non-playoff season for a franchise once considered a perennial NFC power, it's hardly a surprising turn of events.

And yet the question arises: what now? For years, the Saints have ignored in their actions and words the logical benefits of tearing down and rebuilding. While Allen's firing is a given for both the team's recent struggles and Allen's personal career as a leader, it suggests that a new approach has finally taken hold.

First, let's remember Allen's original promotion to head coach in 2022. This was no ordinary hire. It was “safe” and intentionally low-key, considering Allen had spent the previous seven seasons in the building, working as Sean Payton's trusted defensive coordinator. However, his promotion was never seen as a long-term plan, as Payton famously “stepped down” rather than fully retired after the 2021 season, even publicly endorsing Allen as a “great candidate” for the job while he looked for his own position cared career.

Everything about that passing of the torch suggested that the Saints were committed to the status quo, effectively continuing the Payton era while Payton himself avoided the burden of rebuilding an aging, expensive roster no longer backed by an all-time quarterback Drew Brees was anchored. And make no mistake: The roster declined significantly from 2019 to 2021, going from 13 wins to 12 to nine, with just a single playoff win in between. Allen picked up just seven wins in his debut in 2022, continuing the downward trend, and yet the team doubled down on its win-now approach and paid no small amount of money in Derek Carr for a “real” Brees successor, albeit brave and experienced, came to New Orleans with exactly zero playoff wins of his own.

A season and a half later, the results were predictably mediocre, and only a push in late 2023 in a weak NFC South seemed to save Allen and Carr for another run this fall. Now that the former has been led off the train, it's only a matter of time before Carr says goodbye to New Orleans himself. Again, you can't blame him for playing in pain – and often behind poorly positioned offensive lines – but at 33, with no elite attributes or production and $50 million to $60 million in the final years of his contract, it's hard to see how he fits into the picture beyond this season.

If Carr is truly expendable, the same can – and probably will – be said about virtually every veteran on this Saints roster. CBS Sports NFL Insider Jonathan Jones isn't so sure New Orleans sees the 2025 season as a stage for a complete overhaul, but unless the Saints brass pulls the ultimate double-down maneuver and tries to pairing this struggling roster with an even more established coaching candidate (e.g. Bill Belichick, Mike Vrabel) It's difficult to read Allen's firing as anything other than a long-overdue admission that a sweeping change has finally and reluctantly occurred – that the Payton- Era can really be mercifully buried.

That means former or current fan favorites like Jordan, Marshon Lattimore, Demario Davis, Tyrann Mathieu, etc. may all be taking some of their final snaps in Saints uniforms. And hopefully, for the fans' sake, it could also mean that a redesign of the infrastructure is imminent. Of course, rebuilding a true competitor is much easier said than done. But attempt is sometimes better than living in the ugly middle, convincing yourself year after year that everything will be okay when in reality it isn't.