Stephen A. Smith and Shannon Sharpe kick Dennis Allen while he's down on First Take

The Dennis Allen era is officially over for the New Orleans Saints. While fans are mostly breathing a sigh of relief, the Saints still have a ton of problems they need to solve over the next several years. Will the team finally rebuild now? What happens to the expensive contracts on the books? Who's going to come in and clean up this mess?

For now, however, Allen is gone and Saints fans are rejoicing. Yes, it's a cruel world in sports, as fans openly celebrate when people lose their jobs but Allen wasn't good at his job and when people aren't good at their jobs, they usually get fired. People don't hold back when criticizing coaches whenever they lose their job and Allen is no different.

First Take co-hosts Stephen A. Smith and Shannon Sharpe eviscerated Allen while discussing his Saints coaching tenure during Monday's show. Sharpe kicked things off by noting how the Saints had lost seven straight games with the cherry on top being the loss to the worst team in the NFL this past weekend. "I don't know how he was going to survive that," Sharpe said.

Going back to my point earlier about celebrating when people in sports lose their job, Sharpe said it best. "There's an expectation that the Saints had and the expectations weren't met." Spot on.

Smith started his thoughts by noting that he never thought Allen deserved to be the head coach of the Saints because of how poorly things went for him when he ran the show in Oakland in the early 2010s. "The man has had one winning season in six years as a head coach and that was a 9-8 record. There's nothing that we've seen from him that says he was head coaching material."

First Take co-hosts not surprised to see Dennis Allen kicked to the curb

I know we all have our opinions about First Take, particularly Stephen A. Smith but he and Shannon Sharpe are not wrong at all with what they're saying here. Allen was fired because the Saints had become a laughing stock under his leadership and with the players starting to spout off on social media, it was clear he needed to be let go.

While Saints fans were all aware of Allen's poor showing when he was the Raiders head coach from 2012 to 2014, he had done such a great job as the defensive coordinator and everyone gave him glowing reviews at the time that it felt as though he deserved a second chance. As we know now, it didn't work out. Allen has cemented himself as a guy who's a great coordinator but a lousy head coach and it's doubtful he gets another chance to lead a team.

Good on the Saints front office for making the decision to fire Allen and hopefully the next hire goes better. Unfortunately, the Saints are probably going to be pretty bad for the next few years while they tear this whole thing down and look to rebuild. Had they just done that in the first place ahead of the 2023 season, we could already be in a better spot by now but hey, better late than never, right?