More from the MMQB: Trade grades | Winners and losers | Fact or fiction
• The New Orleans Saints–Washington Commanders trade, the headliner of deadline day, is really a mark of two teams pivoting and changing direction at midseason. Two months ago, New Orleans would have been the far more likely of the two to be buyers at the deadline, with a veteran roster and a staff coaching for its survival. Washington, conversely, was there with a first-year staff and what felt like a significant rebuild ahead.
Yet, now, 28-year-old, four-time Pro Bowler Marshon Lattimore is headed for the supposed rebuild. So much for all those narratives.
This deal makes sense for both teams. For the Saints, if they want to start cleaning out a salary cap that’s needed it for years, offloading well-paid veterans is a necessity. And in this case, they do so while getting a significant return to start building back up, landing Washington’s slotted third- and fourth-round picks, plus the sixth New Orleans gave them in the John Ridgeway III trade (with a fifth going to Washington with Lattimore). Volume of picks will, for sure, help to remake the roster long-term.
Meanwhile, the Commanders fill a crying need with a guy who still has prime years left. They get him at the minimum this year and have, essentially, team options on him at $18 million next year and $18.5 million in 2025, which takes him just past his 30th birthday. Part of Washington’s issue coming out of this year will likely be that the team’s biggest needs are at premium positions—and it’s hard to address needs in multiple premium spots in one offseason (because of the scarcity of answers). This gives them a head start.
Is Lattimore the same guy he was earlier in his career? Talking to execs who’ve watched him, the answer is no—he’s still good, but not what he was a year or two ago. Although one mentioned to me that he hasn’t looked as engaged this year, so it might simply be a matter of turning up his effort, which Lattimore presumably can do for his new team.
It’s hard to know exactly what the final tally for this deal will read a few years from now. But today? It does look logical for both sides, if in a way that no one would’ve seen coming.
• While we’re there, the Saints are in a spot that is, well, not normal for them.
Relieving Dennis Allen this week marked the first time they’ve fired a coach since the Katrina-ravaged season of 2005, and you could argue that this will be the first real coaching search they’ve conducted since then—Allen had been earmarked internally as a potential Sean Payton successor a long time ago, and was cemented as the guy when Dan Campbell left after 2020.
So whether the Saints go with the familiar, such as Detroit Lions DC Aaron Glenn, or someone in which they don’t have a connection, I’d expect that they’ll look at a lot of things over the next couple of months to come up with a plan for how to attack the market.
One nugget I picked up the past couple of days is that this decision was very much driven by ownership, with Gayle Benson reaching a breaking point with the team’s struggles over the past few weeks. GM Mickey Loomis, I’m told, didn’t want to pull the plug on Allen yet, but Benson and her group was hearing from the fan base in a way they hadn’t before, and their resolve was strengthened through that, to the point where perception inside the building holds that Allen might’ve been fired Monday even if he’d beaten the Carolina Panthers.
Either way, it’s done now, and highly regarded special teams coach Darren Rizzi will get a half-season audition. And though Rizzi’s now in his sixth season in New Orleans, having spent three under Sean Payton and the past two and a half under Allen, there will be change. Veteran assistant Joe Woods will take over as defensive play-caller with Allen gone, and there will be other changes at Rizzi’s direction.
One is that the players will arrive to a remade locker room Wednesday, with position groups clustered together inside it, to push messaging that it’s time for different units across the roster to pull together and pull the Saints out of their 2–7 hole.
Rizzi does have head coaching experience, albeit at the college level. He led the University of New Haven’s Division II program from 1999 to 2001 and his alma mater, Rhode Island, in ’08. He left both places to be an assistant at an elevated level, going from New Haven to Rutgers to be special teams coach at his home state’s flagship school, then from Rhode Island to the Miami Dolphins, which got him to the NFL, where he’s been since.
