Here’s a cool story. Kellen Moore coached with Chase Haslett on the Dallas Cowboys, and now they’re together again on the New Orleans Saints — the team Haslett’s father led to their first-ever playoff win. Jim Haslett’s son has gone on to put together a fine career for himself as an NFL coach, and NFL Network’s Mike Garafolo reports he and the Saints have reached an agreement on a deal making him their new tight ends coach.
Haslett, 32, is seen as a coach on the rise. He began his coaching career with the Cowboys as an offensive quality coach back in 2020, and was promoted to assistant tight ends coach in 2023. Last season Mike McCarthy promoted him again, this time to pass game coordinator. Now he’s earned the full-time gig with McCarthy out in Dallas and a new opportunity opening up in New Orleans. He previously worked as a graduate assistant at Nebraska and Mississippi State, and coached tight ends at Mercer College in 2019.
This was an important hire for Moore to get right. Tight ends are vital weapons in his offense. Since his first year as an offensive coordinator, he’s asked a past-his-prime Jason Witten to handle 83 targets in 2019 with Dalton Schultz seeing 89 in 2020, 104 in 2021, and 89 again in 2022. Gerald Everett was thrown to 70 times on the Los Angeles Chargers in 2023, and while he was limited by injury in 2024, Dallas Goedert still had 72 targets across 14 combined regular season and playoff games with the Philadelphia Eagles.
And it remains to be seen who will take the lion’s share of targets for the Saints in 2025. Juwan Johnson is a free agent and Foster Moreau suffered a serious knee injury in the final game of the year. Taysom Hill is recovering from a bad knee injury, too, and his future with the team is uncertain. Don’t be shocked if the Saints look to the 2025 draft class for help at an important position.