The New Orleans Saints never figured out how to use Zack Baun throughout his rookie contract. Now that he is starring for the Philadelphia Eagles, he has started to look back at what went wrong with the Saints.
Jori Epstein of Yahoo Sports recently spoke with Baun about his time in New Orleans and those four years seemed to be incredibly tough for him:
“There was days in New Orleans where I just came home and cried,” said Baun. “I played on the ball; now I’m off the ball. I made a couple mistakes and then I felt like I let myself down in that situation and I let the organization down in that situation. Then they moved me to [strongside linebacker] and then I’m like ‘Dang, they moved me. I must not be doing good.’ Then I’d make another mistake.
“It just snowballed in my head that I felt like I wasn’t good anymore.”
In 15 games with the Eagles this season, he has 145 tackles with 3.5 sacks and 11 tackles for a loss. That is more in each category than he had during his entire time with the Saints.
Though it was easy to see the talent when New Orleans drafted him back 2020, there were immediate questions about the fit. He was an All-American edge rusher with the Wisconsin Badgers, but that just isn’t something that the Saints ever utilized. Given their needs for size at defensive end, they moved him to an off-ball linebacker role.
From 2020 to 2022, he had just 58 tackles with two for a loss and no sacks. He was barely used. Baun still only played 27% of defensive snaps in 2023, but started to break out in the second half of the season when they finally started to let him get after the quarterback.
The linebacker finished the season with 30 tackles with two sacks and four tackles for a loss.
A failure to adapt with the talent at hand is a large factor as to why the previous New Orleans coaching regime is now gone. Perhaps the next group can learn from their mistakes and start to modernize on both sides of the ball.