Copyright Baton Rouge Advocate
A year and a week ago, a dejected Dennis Allen stood at a lectern in the bowels of Bank of America Stadium and tried to come up with answers to the questions about how far his team had fallen. On Nov. 3 of last year, the New Orleans Saints traveled to Charlotte looking to snap a six-game losing streak against a 1-7 Carolina Panthers team. Instead, the Saints blew a five-point lead in the closing minutes. Needing just a field goal to retake the lead inside the final two minutes, the Saints turned it over on downs near midfield with 1:04 remaining and watched as Carolina kneeled out the clock on New Orleans' seventh straight defeat. The thing is, there weren’t really any answers — none that were satisfactory anyway. The Saints fired Allen the next morning. And while much has changed in the last year, things are still very much the same for the franchise. The head coach is different, the offensive and defensive schemes are different, the quarterback is different — one of a group of rookies are playing significant snaps — but the thing that is impossible to ignore is the record that shows a team mired in the NFL’s gutter. New Orleans has won four out of 17 games since it jettisoned Allen. It will travel back to Carolina this week for the first time since that tide-changing game last season with a 1-8 record under new head coach Kellen Moore, putting the Saints squarely in the mix for the first overall pick in next year’s draft. A division title and a playoff berth are so far out of the picture they’re not worth bringing up. So, what is important for this team as it tries to dig itself out of the place it resides? The answer depends on who you’re talking to, and what their role is in getting things back on track. For the first-year head coach, it is about establishing the right foundation. Moore has changed some of the way things operate within the building. There are big things, like the way the team practices and rehabilitates (and pre-habilitates) injuries. There are small interpersonal things, like the way he communicates with and relates to the players. That can all be boiled down to one of Moore’s favorite words: Process. “Obviously the results are the most important part of it, but we’ve got to make sure our process is going the right direction,” Moore said. “I think our guys are working really hard, they put in the work during the week, and ultimately we haven’t got the Sunday results that we want. “But we think our guys are heading in the right direction. We’ve got some young guys that have gotten better through the course of this thing; we’re going to let a lot of guys grow as we go through this process. There’ll be some really good success because of that.” Process has been inextricably linked to champions, such as Nick Saban’s Alabama teams. The legendary head coach spoke the word often, and this is the definition Moore is seeking to establish with his Saints. Process, in this case, involves perfecting the small details and habitually doing the right thing. The outcome is not the vision, but rather the byproduct of the process. But "process" can also be associated with long and painful rebuilds, like the one the Philadelphia 76ers went through, enduring multiple seasons where they won less than 25% of their games before they finally broke through and made seven consecutive playoff appearances. And while the head coach and others at the top of the organization are focused on finding the right process, those on the front lines are trying to keep the true foundation from crumbling beneath them as the losses pile up. Demario Davis and Cameron Jordan have played for some of the best teams in Saints history. They know what winning cultures are supposed to look like. They have also been there to watch the Saints' season win total dip from 12 to 9 to 7 to 5. For Davis, there are three things that bring him to work every day outside of the handsome paycheck — three things he needs to see if he’s on a rebuilding team with a rebuilding record: Toughness, togetherness and joy. He says he’s seen the toughness in the way the team has battled through some of the losses. He said the togetherness “speaks for itself” in the way the team has not fractured as it has gotten off to this difficult start. As for the joy, at least he’s still personally excited to come to the facility every day. “There’s nothing fun (about losing) — the most fun you have in this game is when you’re winning,” Davis said, adding later, “those are the three components that we’re building toward. We have those things, so that’s a good foundation as far as the locker room is concerned.’ Jordan, on the other hand, is still holding onto the idea that these 1-8 Saints can right the ship with eight games remaining. Now in what may be the final season of a potential Hall of Fame career, Jordan said he’s seen enough flashes from the team to believe they’re capable of more. “But it’s not at a consistent level,” Jordan said. “Clearly you see the scoreboard indicate it’s not consistent. … Let’s put 60 minutes together. I can’t say it’s anybody else; it’s on us.” If they could do that, he said, it would be less “Bad News Bears,” and more “the Saints we’ve been for a number of years.” “But until then, we’ve got to stop beating ourselves,” Jordan said. The Panthers could actually provide a road map for how the Saints get out of this. Going into that game last year, the Panthers were in a similar position to where the Saints are now, having lost 22 of their previous 25 games. Head coach Dave Canales was in his first season as head coach, and he’d looked overwhelmed in the role. Bryce Young, the No. 1 overall pick of the 2023 draft, had been benched. Starting with that win over the Saints, Carolina is 9-9 since last November, and it appears to be an ascending team, coming into this week’s game having just knocked off the Green Bay Packers and sitting just outside the NFC playoff picture. Maybe it was process that got them back up off the mat, or finding joy in the bad place, or just a little more consistency — or maybe Carolina just hit on the right blend of all of them, along with bringing the right people in.
