The New Orleans Saints have finalized a deal with Kellen Moore to become their next head coach, and with that, he now has a lot of work to get done in his first few weeks. Before discussing that however, we have to discuss coach Moore himself, and what he brings to this Saints team that so desperately needed an overhaul in the coaching department, and will no doubt get it.
One of the primary factors he brings to the team is an offensive pedigree, which is a huge addition for a team that has struggled immensely on that side of the ball. Every person who has spoken about him to the media has stated that he has an expansive knowledge of the game, of offensive schematics, and just general knowledge. This type of knowledge not only helps come up with a new scheme to work around players, but it also allows him to implement it quickly and efficiently as we saw with the Philadelphia Eagles.
Speaking of working with the players he has, he recently made it clear that his coaching philosophy is that, “Everyone’s got superpowers. Just find what their superpowers are, lean into those.” This type of mentality is great for the Saints, as they have a decent amount of individual talent across the offense with guys like Alvin Kamara, Taliese Fuaga, Chris Olave, Rashid Shaheed, and others, so having a coach who is willing to tap into that and build around the players he has rather than molding them into a pre-set scheme is definitely preferrable.
On top of all this, he has knowledge of what it takes to win the big game now, which is something the Saints desperately needed in a head coach. This knowledge will help him not only fill out the roster and add new players, but also fill out the remainder of his coaching staff, as he has lots of choices to be made when it comes down to both coordinator positions (and maybe special teams as well), as well as multiple other positional roles he needs to figure out. His experience across multiple teams in the past will hopefully help him garner some attention from other coaches he has worked with, and allow him to put together a high quality staff both offensively and defensively.
Most importantly though, he brings a fresh mindset and hope to the team. We saw how much this team rallied even under a former Sean Payton coach when they switched to Darren Rizzi midseason, and the scheme did not particularly change a huge amount in that move. However now they are getting someone with a completely new mindset towards development and coaching, with no ties to the Payton regime and his own learning experience on how things should be run. This is the first time since pre-Sean Payton that they have had a completely new coach hire externally, and we will see how this overhaul works out in the coming years.