[Lzen]

Originally Posted by IronSaint

I'll co-sign on all this. Additionally, the house cleaning of assistant coaches this past offseason can't be understated enough, especially to those outside trying to understand how the team turned it around.

For those that aren't familiar with our coaching staff in New Orleans, a number of our assistant coaches (mostly on the defensive side and the special teams coordinator) were long-tenured and known to be "Payton's boys" and regardless of how inept the performances were by their units on the tape, they seemed untouchable. Instead, the blame was continuously placed only on the shoulders of *insert defensive coordinator's name here* and the hiring and firing carousel spun on in attempts to fix what we were trying to call a "defense" instead of entirely cleaning house and starting from scratch.

Every hire we'd make at DC would be stuck with Payton's minions, which many fans felt was a way of Payton micro-managing the DC after the Williams fiasco. It became obvious when Payton hired Dennis Allen (our former secondary coach from our Super Bowl run before his stints in Denver as DC and Oakland as HC) as a "defensive assistant" which we knew was code for "soon-to-be defensive coordinator as soon as we fire Rob Ryan" which came to fruition a few weeks later after losing to the Redskins, 47-14.

Finally this offseason, whether voluntarily or by way of his own seat warming, Payton bit the bullet and cleaned house on the defensive side the ball and special teams. Joe Vitt (LB's/assistant HC), Bill Johnson (DL), Greg McMahon (STC) and Stan Kwan (assistant ST) were moved out and replaced by Mike Nolan, Ryan Nielsen, Bradford Banta and Kevin O'Dea respectively. From our first preseason game, there was a marked difference in the performances in those units from previous years.

Somebody needs to send this to Clark Hunt/Brent Veach.