It's time for the Saints to tear everything down and rebuild

The New Orleans Saints are 2-5 and that's one hell of a hole to dig yourselves out of, even for a team that entered the 2022 season with playoff aspirations.

It's pretty clear after seven games this season that the Saints aren't going anywhere but down. It's too late to salvage that likely top-10 pick that they traded away to Philadelphia but the team is going to have to make some big changes this offseason.

Last offseason should have been when the Saints hit the reset button and began what could be a painfully long rebuild. Instead, Mickey Loomis and company decided to go for it. They traded 2023's first-round pick so that they could have two first-round picks this year and spent those two picks on Chris Olave and Trevor Penning.

While those picks don't necessarily look bad (it's too early to tell on Penning and Olave looks awesome), the Saints could have been drafting in the top 5 in 2023 had they not made that trade. That pick could have either gotten them a franchise quarterback or another key player that would help them win games in 2023 and beyond.

Now they have no choice but to rebuild.

The Saints need to rebuild after disastrous 2022 season.

While they won't be getting that high draft pick back from Philadelphia, fans keep pointing out that they'll likely gain a first-round selection back when Sean Payton wants to return to coaching. That might not come this offseason though. If Payton was smart, he'd stay retired until the best possible situation comes available for him.

Teams like the Chargers and Cowboys have been linked to Payton and for good reason but both of those teams have winning records right now. If both teams make it to the playoffs, are their coaches getting fired? Even if they do get fired, are those really teams Payton wants to work for? The jury is still out on all of that.

New Orleans needs to have a fire sale this offseason and put most of their players up on the trade block. Olave is one of the few players they should hold onto but otherwise, see what you can get for the players you have.

The Saints have a lot of expensive contracts that they need to get off the books this offseason. Michael Thomas isn't going to net them a high draft pick due to his injuries but he's still a talented wide receiver. They should take what they can get for him and unload his contract onto someone else (or maybe at least eat some of it if it comes to that).

Another big thing the Saints are going to need to do this offseason is fire Dennis Allen as the head coach. It's unlikely that he'd want to stick around as the defensive coordinator, which is too bad since he was so good in that role, but some guys are great coordinators but terrible head coaches. Allen has shown that he falls into this category.

Since Allen took over, the Saints are poorly coached and it shows. The turnovers, penalties, and overall sloppiness stems from bad coaching and Allen cannot continue to be in charge after the 2022 season is over.

Firing the head coach and not having a first-round pick would make the Saints job a not-so-ideal one to the potential coaching candidates out there next offseason but that's just something they're going to have to deal with. Allen clearly didn't learn from his stint as the Raiders head coach and that's shown in his seven games with the Saints.

No one likes going through a rebuild but the New Orleans Saints should have done so last offseason and instead thought they were just a quarterback away from being competitive. The problem was that they didn't get the quarterback right and that's hurt them.

Time to tear everything down and rebuild.