This Could Be Really Interesting

Yesterday news broke that basically the entire Saints coaching staff, plus their general manager, would be suspended for the upcoming NFL season as a result of their bounty scandal. Today, people are already starting to write-off the Saints season, but for the wrong reasons entirely. It's true that if the actual players involved in the bounty program face similar punishment, the season would be in jeopardy. A good portion of the Saints defense, including star linebacker Jonathan Vilma, were involved and their losses would be devastating to the team's hopes. But the Saints have always been about offense. And they'll still have Drew Brees, one of the best quarterbacks in the league running the show.

What I would find very intriguing is if the Saints said, "F**k it. We're letting the players coach."

For the past several decades coaches in the NFL have taken on demigod status. They're constantly referred to as "gurus" or "geniuses". They're glorified for consistently putting in 16+ hour workdays the entire year round, sleeping at team facilities, and destroying their families in the pursuit of winning. What has been implied is that coaches drive the NFL, not the players, but there has always been the alternate theory that players make the coach. The list of NFL coaches that have excelled with future Hall of Famers leading their teams only to fall flat on their faces with another team with averages Joes is extensive - Shanahan, Parcells, and Jimmy Johnson, to name just a few. Coaches are saviors. "If we could just get a good coach he could coach up these guys and turn things around!"

So what if a team won without an established coaching staff? Brees already was a ringleader in pulling his team together and organizing workouts during last year's lockout. He's the undisputed team leader. Everyone on that team respects him and would follow his lead. I'd love it if Tom Benson just threw him the keys and said, "It's your team this year." If there's any team in the NFL that could pull this off, it'd be the Saints. Again, Brees is established and knows the organization, and they're going to have a huge us-against-them mentality to rally around. Besides, it's super late in the off-season already and you know Payton is coming back. What coach in his right mind would even want the gig?

Every pundit, announcer, and former player now on TV would shout that the Saints were throwing away the season by not hiring an experienced coach. And if the Saints defied expectations and actually won it would throw everything we've been told about the importance of a good coach right out the window. In short, it would be awesome.