'Dennis Allen, he's a problem.' Pushing all the right buttons

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Ask an opposing coach what is standing out about this New Orleans Saints defense at this point in time, and the trend in the answers is pretty clear.

Here was Eagles coach Doug Pederson, who this week is handing the offense over to rookie quarterback Jalen Hurts against the Saints and their No. 1 total defense: “They feed off their coordinator, (Dennis) Allen. … They got the right pieces of the puzzle, running the right scheme and when you have that going for you, a lot of things click.”

Here, a week earlier, was Falcons coach Raheem Morris, whose team managed just 25 points combined in two games against the Saints this season: “Dennis Allen, he’s a problem. … He’s got those guys revved up; he’s got those guys getting after us.”

Through 12 games, Allen has his defensive unit at or near the top of the NFL in most defensive statistics. The Saints entered this week ranked No. 1 in total defense (288.5 yards per game), No. 2 in rush defense (76.1), No. 4 in pass defense (212.8) and No. 5 in scoring defense (20.1 points per game). Even advanced metrics, such as defense-adjusted value over average (DVOA) favor the Saints, whose defense ranks second in the NFL in that category.

To the people whose job it is to not only study what has made that defense so stout, but to try and figure out how to attack it, it is clear whose fingerprints are all over it. And Allen is flattered by that.

“One of the things you want as a coach is to do a good job and gain the respect of your peers,” Allen said, shortly before moving onto anything but himself. “... Obviously there’s a lot of factors that are involved in the whole process in terms of what we’re doing defensively.”

There are the people in charge of making the roster decisions, Allen said — general manager Mickey Loomis, college scouting director Jeff Ireland and pro personnel man Terry Fontenot. There is his accomplished staff of defensive assistants that helps implement his vision. And then, of course, there is all that talent the front office has assembled for Allen.

“I’m a lot better coach when I’ve got really good players,” Allen said. “I’m fortunate that I’ve got a lot of good players that I get an opportunity to work with.”

So, Allen said, his job is really simple: Identify and clearly communicate exactly how he wants everybody to fit within the defensive framework, cultivate a mindset that prioritizes process over results — then get out of the way and let them play.

Then again, Allen might be selling himself short. Linebacker Demario Davis called Allen one of the smartest coaches he’s ever worked with.

“He has a great understanding of what the offenses are about to do or how they're going to plan their plan of attack versus us and has built a defense where he can make small adjustments that make a big difference week in and week out,” Davis said. “That way that we can kind of shape shift around our strengths and what the offense is going to be able to do or going to attempt to do against us.”

Davis sees the Saints defensive improvement from the beginning of the season until now, and he attributes that to Allen getting his players to lock in on the process. To hear Allen say it, everything that happens Sunday is a byproduct of what happens Monday through Saturday.

So, he chooses not to focus too much on the results. He said he was not interested in the Saints becoming the NFL’s No. 1 defense a few weeks back, the same way he said he was not interested in the results from early this season, when the Saints had a series of defensive miscues that led to big plays.

It wasn’t the coverage breakdowns themselves that concerned Allen; it was the thing they were missing throughout the week that led to them.

“I kept saying it throughout those early weeks: There’s a lot of good things that we’re doing, we’ve just got to eliminate the few bad plays that we have,” Allen said. “That’s on us as coaches to clearly identify what we’re looking for to eliminate some of the white noise and take some of the thought process out for our players and really try to simplify the game a little bit for them.”

What Allen and the Saints coaching staff did appeared to work. They have their talented defensive players executing the small details of their defensive framework the way they want them to, which is leading to results, which is leading to praise from his peers in the coaching profession.

So what else will it lead to? Could Allen be positioning himself to land a head coaching job this offseason?

Allen was 39 years old when he was named the head coach of the Oakland Raiders back in 2012. His time there was short, but he’s a decade wiser and is the coordinator of one of the NFL’s best units on one of the NFL’s best teams.

He believes he is a better coach now than he was then, simply because he has more experience to draw from. At the same time, he doesn’t want to get too caught up in the 30,000-foot view of his career.

“I would love to have that opportunity (to be a head coach) again at some point in time, but that’s really — and I mean this sincerely — that is none of my focus right now,” Allen said.

That would be focusing on a result, not the process.