Has Loomis Mended His Ways? Part 2

10/19/2024: At this time I am no longer necessarily calling for Mickey Loomis to be fired, because in the last year he has finally started to do things the Saints need to do to rebuild for a better future. I am calling for him to continue with a rebuild, trade or cut aging players, and move on from Derek Carr who might be a decent ok QB on the right team with a young core and excellent oline but can't carry an aging roster on a team with a bloated cap, and players like Marshon Lattimore and Alvin Kamara who are getting to the age where most players at their positions decline rapidly and they dont make sense on a rebuilding roster. If Mickey Loomis returns to his old ways, starts spending salary cap like there is no tomorrow, trades up in the draft, trades future picks, extends DA, Carr, Kamara, Lattimore, etc, I will renew my calls for his firing. At this point Mickey Loomis is a manager with an accounting background who relies on scouts and advisors to pick players, but who utilized a bad cap and draft management philosophy for years, and may have learned his lesson. If he learned his lesson, and if he gets some better scouts and advisors, that lesson could be valuable and help the team. I said we needed to rebuild, I said rebuilding would be tough for a year or two, and now we are starting to rebuild and it is tough, so I can't blame Loomis if he stays the course. Dennis Allen is not a good NFL coach, he does not inspire, he does not win, he is a tactician DC who isn't suited to lead, but in a rebuild the Saints may not be able to attract the best new head coaching candidates until they clean up their cap or have attractive draft picks, so the timing of Dennis Allen's departure is not my greatest concern as long as he is not extended. The important thing is to stay the course with a rebuild, keep draft picks and get lots of young players, and use our two post-June-1 cut designations in the upcoming offseason for players like Carr, Ram, Kamara, or Lattimore (ideally all 4 should go in a rebuild). If Loomis stays the course on a rebuild I support him.

My main opposition to Mickey Loomis has been that, obsessed with his own ability to manipulate the salary cap and luck in acquiring Drew Brees after a major injury and getting 15 years of injury free football from him, Loomis became the ultimate 'go for broke' gambler of a GM. His deals to restructure contracts every offseason to go from near $100 million over the cap every time made fans believe the Saints had a cheat code and the salary cap meant nothing, but in reality the Saints had no cheat code, and all the restructurings actually took a deep toll because the Saints were basically borrowing cap money mortgaged against all their big contracts, meaning they could not cut or trade anyone or the full balance became due. The Saints became trapped in throwing good money after bad in deals with players like Andrus Peat, Michael Thomas, Ryan Ramczyk, Taysom Hill (sorry but he is not durable when used extensively), and finally Derek Carr. At the same time Mickey Loomis's instinct to gamble, fostered by beginners luck in acquiring Brees, who in a parallel universe could just as easily have watched from the golf course as Chad Pennington had a hall of fame career, grew out of control. Loomis made big trades up in almost every draft where he didnt already trade away the picks from trading up the year before. He gambled on badly injured free agents like WR Cameron Meredith and gave them starting spots. He gambled on first round draft picks with big injury histories. The sum of all these gambles, and all the money locked up in contracts we could not escape because restructuring had tied so much dead money to any cut or trade, was a roster with less depth, less youth, and less accountability that any other team in the league. For years I have urged a rebuild, and Loomis has kept going 'all in' for mediocre results, every time locking the Saints in further with restructures and bad trades, until the Saints started each offseason so far over the cap that it was financially impossible to clean house, and going into the 2024 offseason the only option to stay under the cap was to restructure most of the roster and hardly cut anyone.

Yet, since the 2024 offseason began, Loomis may have actually changed his ways. I have nothing personal against Loomis, just the philosophy he adopted from the latter years of Drew Brees' career through 2023. In the 2024 offseason I expected Loomis to restructure everyone. I knew 2/3rds to 3/4ths of the big contracts would have to be restructured to get under the cap, but I assumed he would restructure them all to make a splash in free agency. The team badly needed offensive line in the draft, so I assumed he would trade all our picks to move up for a defensive lineman or wide receiver with a checkered injury history. I was expecting not just restructures but big extensions with lots of guaranteed money for our aging stars, like Cameron Jordan's 2023 extension which I like to summarize as 3 years, 3 sacks, $30 million guaranteed (Jordan has 2 sacks so far since 2023, and the contract could pay up to $52.5 million total). But somehow in the 2024 offseason and since, Loomis has not done this. He did have to restructure most of the Saints contracts to get under the cap, but he did not take the money and go after a major free agent. He resisted fans calling for him to trade for Brandon Aiyuk, Davante Adams, David Back-to-IR, etc. He did not trade up significantly in the draft (the Saints had several extra 5th round picks and made some minor trades but nothing big). The Saints drafted an offensive lineman in the first round who played a position of need and was not viewed as a major reach or injury reclamation project. The Saints got rid of several bad contracts, savings lots of money in the long term, even though they could have saved more in the short term by kicking the can down the road and restructuring with Marcus Maye, Jameis Winston (great guy but no point in paying him to get older and not play), Michael Thomas, and Andrus Peat. The Saints did not give any veterans sweetheart farewell tour deals that would overpay them into their mid 30's like they did with Cam Jordan. They gave extensions to Demario Davis and Tyrann Mathieu where the two agreed to take real pay cuts (not just accounting scheme to make windfall bonuses count against later years caps). They got Ryan Ramczyk to take a major pay cut and restructure his contract in a way that will set up for a cut in the 2025 offseason. Fans clamored for Mickey Loomis to 'pay the man' and give Alvin Kamara a new contract, but the vast majority of great NFL running backs decline rapidly after 30, and Loomis actually managed to resist the pressure and not restructure or extend Kamara so far. An extension for Kamara could have mirrored Cameron Jordans except '3 years, 3 yards per carry, $30 million guaranteed' to Jordan's 3 sacks (if he even gets a 3rd). Meanwhile Loomis restructured Marshon Lattimore's contract to facilitate a trade, but wasn't able to pull one off (not that surprising that no team would trade for an aging CB who missed half of the last two seasons), and at least did not extend Kamara. The only significant other new money Loomis spent was to sign Chase Young to an affordable 1 year prove it deal and to extend Pete Werner on a modest deal, fairly responsible moves.

Based on these moves, I feel like Mickey Loomis, as a GM, is like a long term alcoholic who has earned his 1 year chip. For the last year, he is actually doing the right thing. This team needed to rebuild, and the team was so far in on max salary cap spending and restructures that it was like turning around a giant cargo ship at full speed to start positioning for a rebuild. Rebuilds are not easy and some teams can lose a lot during them. Thats how they get high draft picks. But they need to be done from time to time, and the Saints need a rebuild now. So while many fans supported Loomis during his days irresponsible spending and gambling, and have turned against him when 9-8 turns into  2-5 because hard decisions are starting to be made correctly and he didn't mortgage the future to bring in Davante Adams (who is older than Julio Jones when he joined the Titans), I am more supportive of Loomis now than I have been in many years, as long as he stays the course and keeps that chip.