Saints Turnaround
Saints Basics
Saints, Loomis Have Made All the Right Moves
Bit by Bit, GM Built a Contender
Sunday, January 21, 2007; Page E05
In the days and months after Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast and New Orleans, the Saints, one of the NFL's traditionally poor teams, were the least of the area's problems.
Which is not to say that they weren't a problem. Forced to relocate to San Antonio, the Saints limped through a 3-13 season and their long-term future in New Orleans was in question. As the dismal 2005 season ended, General Manager Mickey Loomis knew he had to take apart the team and rebuild it -- but he worried that no one would want to come to the ravaged city to work for a broken franchise with such an uncertain future.
"I thought we could have a problem," Loomis said in a midweek phone interview. "I definitely thought it could be a problem in the coaching search -- not so much with the head coach because those jobs are so scarce and they're so coveted, but when it came to getting assistant coaches -- and players. Those guys have other options."
There had been talk at one point among league officials and the 32 owners of altering the salary cap rules to enable the Saints to offer players special inducements to play in New Orleans. Last season, Saints players got $40,000 bonuses from the league and NFL Players Association. But nothing ever was done to help Loomis rebuild the club for this season. He was on his own.
Looking back as the Saints prepare to play the first NFC championship game in their history today in Chicago, Loomis did exceptionally well. It wasn't merely that the football fates owed the Saints some big-time breaks. Loomis, the NFL executive of the year, made the right moves and took the right risks at the right time. He landed the NFL's coach of the year, its most prolific quarterback and its most dynamic rookie running back -- not to mention the steal of the draft and a whole collection of useful role players -- in a matter of a few months.
His first masterstroke was hiring Payton, the top offensive assistant to Dallas Cowboys Coach Bill Parcells, to replace the fired Jim Haslett. Payton knew the risks of going to a team that many people in the league believed would be headed to Los Angeles eventually and perhaps sold, but he accepted the job after consulting Parcells and Cowboys owner Jerry Jones. He brought along Cowboys linebackers coach Gary Gibbs as his defensive coordinator and he got Joe Vitt, who'd ended last season as the St. Louis Rams' interim coach, to be his assistant head coach and linebackers coach. The three of them used their connections to cobble together a staff.
Loomis was surprised, he said, that no holdover Saints players asked to be traded or released. Still, he knew there had to be significant roster turnover. Quarterback Aaron Brooks was released. Veteran left tackle Wayne Gandy was traded. Center LeCharles Bentley and defensive end Darren Howard were allowed to depart as free agents. As the opening of the free agent market in March neared, Loomis decided to be upfront with interested players.
"I made the decision early on: 'Yeah, we have those warts. We're not going to hide them. If we disguise it and they come, later on we'll have an unhappy employee,' " Loomis said. "So we said to guys: 'Here are the good things and the bad things. You can have an impact here that goes beyond football.' I was surprised how many guys were attracted to that. Even guys that we didn't get were attracted to the circumstances surrounding our city and our football team."
The approach worked.
"For me, it was all about finding the right fit and the place where I felt the most comfortable and thought I would be the happiest," said linebacker Scott Fujita, who signed a four-year, $12 million contract with the Saints in mid-March after spending last season with the Cowboys. "Once free agency opened up and I came down to New Orleans, I just felt like I was right here where I belonged."
The key to free agency, Loomis said, was getting Drew Brees merely to visit. The quarterback was a marquee free agent even though he was coming off shoulder surgery for an injury suffered in his final game with the San Diego Chargers.
"It sent a message to other guys that they should at least take our phone calls," Loomis said. "More than anything, I was worried about guys dismissing us without even taking our phone calls."
Saints officials suspected initially that Brees and his agent, Tom Condon, merely wanted to use their interest to leverage a better deal elsewhere. The Miami Dolphins, seemingly a team on the rise after going 9-7 in Nick Saban's first season as coach, were in pursuit, but Loomis felt good about the Saints' chances after Brees completed his visit to New Orleans and headed to Miami. He felt even better when the Dolphins, wary of the condition of Brees's shoulder, instead traded for Minnesota Vikings quarterback Daunte Culpepper. The Saints signed Brees the same day to a six-year, $60 million contract.
The Saints had a wide range of medical opinions about Brees's shoulder, ranging from a projection that he'd be ready to play by training camp to one that he wouldn't be ready until the 2007 season. Club officials decided to bet on Brees, Loomis said, because a top quarterback so rarely is available.
Loomis wasn't done making shrewd moves. On the weekend of the NFL draft in April, he traded for Cleveland Browns center Jeff Faine to replace Bentley and for Philadelphia Eagles defensive tackle Hollis Thomas to be a run stopper. Just before the season, he traded for Cowboys linebacker Scott Shanle.
And then, on the night before the draft, Loomis was dining at Emeril's with Payton and front-office executives Rick Mueller and Russ Ball. Their cellphones were ringing incessantly with the latest gossip and, after one round of calls, Payton hung up and said to the group, "Hey, we're gonna get Reggie Bush."
The others dismissed the notion. The Saints had the second pick in the draft and it had been widely assumed throughout the NFL for months that the Houston Texans would use the top overall selection on the Heisman Trophy-winning tailback from the University of Southern California. But more calls came in and Payton became even more convinced. "We're gonna get Reggie Bush," he said. "Here's my 20 dollars."
The bet was on. Loomis, Mueller and Ball happily paid up when the Texans decided to go with North Carolina State defensive end Mario Williams, signing him to a contract on the night that Loomis and Payton were dining at Emeril's. Bush was theirs.
On the second day of the draft, the Saints used a seventh-round pick on a wide receiver from Hofstra, Marques Colston. Scouts David Hinson and Dwaune Jones had seen Colston and liked him, although they worried about the level of competition he was facing. Rick Reiprish, the Saints' director of college scouting, saw him at a college all-star game and assistant coach John Morton studied him on tape. All of them thought Colston might be a serviceable player in a year or two.
The Saints contemplated drafting Colston from the fourth round on but kept passing on him until the seventh round because they thought he'd stay on the board. Colston had a bad rookie minicamp but started impressing from the opening day of training camp, and Payton and the coaches soon became so convinced that they'd unearthed a serious player that Loomis completed a late-August trade that sent wideout Donte Stallworth to the Eagles for middle linebacker Mark Simoneau and a draft choice.
From there, it all worked as if there had been a grand plan. Brees threw for more than 4,400 yards and finished second in the league most valuable player balloting. Bush and Colston combined for 158 catches and both finished in the top five in the offensive rookie of the year voting. Faine started every game for the league's top-ranked offense. Thomas, Fujita, Shanle and Simoneau were starters and key contributors to an underrated defense. Other things fell into place, like tailback Deuce McAllister returning from a knee injury and second-year pro Jammal Brown making a smooth transition from right tackle to left tackle to replace Gandy. And asking Loomis now to name his favorite move is a little like asking him which of his children he likes the best.
"Sean Payton and Drew Brees, those are the two most important," he said. "But after that, I don't know if I can put my finger on any one thing and say, 'That's the one,' because they were all integral to our team. Jeff Faine was a key acquisition. Hollis Thomas was a key acquisition. Fujita, Shanle, Simoneau -- they were all important."
Check Out My Other Blogs (click on blog name to go there) = / 1.3rd Eye Blog / 2. Favorites Blog/ 3. Vita Excolatur (Living Well ...) Blog/ 4. Humor Me Blog/ 5. News and Current Events Blog/ 6. Consider This ... Blog/ 7. Consumer Warnings Blog/ 8. New Orleans Pentimento Blog/ 9. We Constant Gardeners Blog/ 10. Chaillot Family Blog/
posted by Joe Paris at Sunday, January 21, 2007
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home