NFL insider’s notes on Saints: Latest on search for new head coach and questions around GM Mike Loomis’s future

The New Orleans Saints are just one of many teams in the market for a new head coach after firing Dennis Allen nine games into the season. While many expect an exhaustive interview process, there is one person several league insiders tell me they believe will end up with the job.

After two and a half seasons and a cumulative record of 18-25, Dennis Allen was fired as coach of the Saints. Expectations were high after a 9-8 mark one season ago, and many believed New Orleans would make a run at the playoffs. Yet it never materialized despite the team winning the first two games in blowout fashion, including a 44-19 victory over the Dallas Cowboys. The Saints then dropped seven in a row, three of those losses by a field goal or less, before owner Gayle Benson pulled the trigger and fired Allen.

The Saints now join the New York Jets and Chicago Bears as teams searching for a new head coach, a list that will surely grow after the final week of the regular season.

And while several candidates have been connected as the Saints next head coach, league sources tell me when all is said and done, it will be Aaron Glenn who lands the job.

Glenn, the defensive coordinator of the Detroit Lions, has interviewed for head-coaching jobs in the past, meeting with the Tennessee Titans about their vacancy last January. He, along with Lions offensive coordinator Ben Johnson, will be two hot names heading into the offseason as teams look to fill head-coaching vacancies.

Why do people believe Glenn ends up in New Orleans? Glenn finished his career as a player with the Saints in 2008, then returned as defensive backs coach from 2016 to 2020. But it goes deeper than that.

People tell me longtime Saints general manager Mickey Loomis, who has been with the organization since 2000, isn’t going anywhere anytime soon despite the lack of recent success. Loomis doesn’t want a lot of upheaval in the organization and would prefer to keep several of the existing coaches on the staff.

The belief is Glenn would be open to keeping the coaches Loomis wants retained, given his relationship with the organization and general manager, which makes him a perfect fit for the job. Glenn has also been spoken about as a head-coaching candidate for the New York Jets, the team that selected him in the first round of the 1994 NFL Draft.