It took a little while longer than expected, but the New Orleans Saints have finally gotten involved with this year’s hiring cycle and begun making changes to their coaching staff. Dennis Allen’s crew needs all the help they can get after stumbling into a 7-10 finish last season, and the Saints are hard at work meeting with candidates to fill vacancies on his staff.
Check this space often for updates and instant analysis on each reported coaching change, hiring announcement, and scheduled interview. We’ll be keeping up to date on everything coming out of New Orleans as Allen looks to retool his coaching staff for 2023:
Barone is a longtime position coach who has sent four different tight ends to the Pro Bowl with four different teams (Alge Crumpler, Antonio Gates, Julius Thomas, and Kyle Rudolph), and he’s known Dennis Allen for a long time. He was an assistant coach at Texas A&M when Allen was a student-athlete there, and they later worked together on the Atlanta Falcons and Denver Broncos coaching staffs.
Robertson is an experienced and energetic coach with some close ties to Dennis Allen and new defensive coordinator Joe Woods. He’s been in the NFL for decades as a player, administrator, and coach, and he should be a good influence on a secondary that produced just 7 interceptions last year.
Strief is leaving for a promotion on Sean Payton’s coaching staff with the Denver Broncos, where he’s expected to be named the full-time offensive line coach. Strief spent 12 years as a player in New Orleans before joining them as an assistant coach the last two seasons. He’s a name on the rise in coaching circles and the Saints will miss him.
Robinson wasn’t re-signed when his contract expired at the end of the season, so he’s a free agent who can consider offers from around the league. Maybe he joins Sean Payton on the Denver Broncos. He could also choose to return to New Orleans if he doesn’t find an opportunity he likes better. We’ll keep an eye out for updates. Woods spent the past three years as the Cleveland Browns defensive coordinator, and he’ll hold that same title in New Orleans though his day-to-day responsibilities will be different. He won’t call plays for the Saints defense and much of his attention will go to the secondary; it’s a similar setup to what he saw as the Denver Broncos defensive coordinator under head coach Vance Joseph a few years back.
Grantham’s resume suggests he’ll be working with the defensive line, though his exact job title was left out of ESPN’s report. He coached that position 11 years in the NFL before returning to the college level, latest working as the Florida defensive coordinator and as an analyst for Alabama.
The former Cleveland Browns and Denver Broncos defensive coordinator scheduled a Friday interview in New Orleans for the same position, though his responsibilities would be different than in Cleveland last year. Dennis Allen is still going to call plays so he needs someone to help manage personnel defensively rather than make in-game decisions.
