Heading into their bye week the New Orleans Saints (2-5) are off to a disappointing start to a season that had high hopes.
After finishing the 2025 season 5-4 down the stretch and a new starting quarterback in place with 2025 second-round draft selection Tyler Shough, expectations ran high for the Saints going into 2026. However, the team appears to have taken a considerable step back from that success to close out last year and appear married to a process that’s yielded frustrating results.
Ever since general manager Mickey Loomis urged critical spectators to “look beyond the results,” with the mention of “process” having fallen on deaf ears.
Loomis had the following to say during a January 2025 press conference that followed a season with former head coach Dennis Allen being fired midway through the schedule, a little under a month before hiring current head coach Kellen Moore.
“I think I’m still pretty patient,” Loomis said. “I understand that the results are the results, and you can’t ignore the results, but you also have to look beyond the results sometimes and understand the reasons behind the symptoms. Some are in our control, some aren’t.”
Ever since then, the argument of process over results has been hotly contested by a fanbase that, frankly, pays admission to see results.
The theme has come up again in 2026.
The Saints are off to an unexpectedly dismal start with a winless record at home and on a national stage. Even edge rusher Cameron Jordan, an eternal optimist about his club, admitted his own surprise around the team’s struggles after its most recent loss in Paris, France.
Ironically, the game’s 16-10 score might actually be a result the team wouldn’t want many to look beyond. The Saints did have a number of chances to score and take a lead late, but weren’t able to record key defensive stops.
But how they got there tells the rest of the story.
The team went scoreless in the first quarter for the 17th time in Moore’s tenure, ran 17 times for 18 rushing yards and again asked too much of Shough, the team’s second-year passer.
But the team’s method, which has continued to bear fruitless results more often than not (the team is 8-19 since the beginning of the 2025 season), is one players appear to believe in.
Shough included.
“I think individually and collectively when we have those opportunities, and maybe something went slightly wrong, but the ‘process’; the effort, the play style, our operation, is there, then those are great signs,” he said after the team’s loss in Paris. “We’re doing the right things. Sometimes that guy made a good play.
“That’s why they’re paid a lot of money as well,” Shough said. “So, you can’t really get tied up into the result of ‘Oh man that was an interception,’ or ‘that was a loss,’ or ‘we got sacked here’. It’s more of how do we evaluate from that standpoint and over time those good things will trend in the right direction. So, that’s my mindset every single snap, every play, every week.”
The direction of the team is generally credited to the organization and head coach and Shough is no different, nor any other player willing to follow. However, the concern is that the manner into which the team’s leadership is buying into may be flawed.
Moore hasn’t yet shown the capability to make improvements to his offense, the team’s defense has taken a massive step back from the wildly successful season it had in 2025. The special teams units continue to struggle both in the coverage game (though kick coverage has had some highlights) and in the kicking game, having missed more field goals (18) than any other NFL team over the last two seasons.
Week-to-week, the same issues arise: slow out of the gates, losing the turnover battle, the inability to create a run game and a rushing defense that’s become a liability.
The team has some bright spots.
Quarterback, edge rushers and receivers are chief among them. However, it’s not been enough to lift this team back to the competitive level it achieved during the latter stages of the ‘25 season.
One interesting piece to Shough’s press conference sticks out, however. He was mostly in concert with linebacker Kaden Elliss’s (another team captain) response to the same question. Shough highlighted both the collective and the individual process. Which echoed elements of Elliss’s response.
“You got to look in yourself,” said Elliss. “That’s something we said in [the locker room]. Look at yourself. You’ve got to look at [the] individual process. All right, maybe let’s look at my film through seven weeks. … What have been my mistakes? What have been things I’ve done wrong? Is there a recurring theme in that? If there is, then my process personally has to adjust and then you will make it a step better, right?”
The responses call into question not just an organizational or coaching philosophy, but a player-driven way of doing things as well.
Following the Saints’ loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers, a large debate began across social media among fans about whether or not the team’s regression from year to the next was because of coaching or talent.
Truthfully, both end up pointing back to the same area, where the story started with Loomis. He and his team, as owner Gayle Benson put it, “…are responsible for building a roster capable of sustained success.”
If the individual formulas are under scrutiny, and the coaching style is under fire, it could mean that the recipe at the very top is coming up short. In an era of complacency with little consequence until the team’s owner got involved may be the very culture that’s undoing the team’s course and causing it to go in reverse.
There’s much to examine about the state of this Saints team over the next week. It serves as a chance to prove that the club is not stuck in a rut and unwilling to change. Many will want that change to be with a wide swathe, but more measured approaches are likely to be taken in-season.
But with only 10 games left and a difficult tough schedule ahead, the Saints may be better suited for a change in hopes of enjoying a better second part of the season.
Or at the very least, it’s a path that shows a continuation of a culture overly committed to a process that’s driving disappointing results despite leadership buy-in.
If the players are talented, and the dedication obvious and the results remain lacking, then so too must be the course of action.
