Sean Payton is back (boooo), and already the Saints have had a coaching casualty. That casualty is none other than our own former Steve Spagnuolo. Might the Eagles be interested?

Its been said already that the decision as to who is hired to run our defense may be the most important decision of the early part of our offseason. Earlier this week I was wishfully thinking Lovie Smith would fit just perfect, but he's made it clear he is not coming back to be a coordinator and would sit out the season. So with Spags now available, lets think for a minute.

The hiring of Chip Kelly, despite all the visions that his offensive philosophy is going to revolutionize the NFL, at this point has to be deemed a leap of faith. With zero NFL coaching or playing experience, a seamless transition to the NFL might not be realistic at this point. Thats why I liked the Pat Shurmur hire so much. Shurmur won't ever be confused with Joe Gibbs, but he has had success as a quarterback developer and with some head coaching experience, he should be a pretty solid right hand man for Kelly while he gets acclimated to the NFL landscape. We know Kelly will be calling the plays, but Shurmur should be a good adviser at the least. Now enter Spags. He also has head coaching experience and being a disciple of Jim Johnson, might be able to restore that type of swagger to our defense. And even though his head coaching term with the Rams was by and large a flop, he still has that experience which would only help Chip Kelly more. And how many teams in the NFL would have both an offensive and defensive coordinator with NFL head coaching experience?

We should point out that the Saints were dead last in defense this year. But hey, I guess coaches don't become available when they're producing big results right? What do we all think?