Fall Saints Day

An owner's right shows where teams go wrong

On Thursday morning Tom Benson did what every owner of every business has every right to do. He walked into a meeting with his general manager and fired him.

This is why the New Orleans Saints will never win a Super Bowl as long as Benson owns the team. He is impetuous. He has rabbit ears. He listens to too many advisors and fans (sometimes they're one in the same) who know nothing about what it takes to win big in the NFL. Thursday was a classic example as Benson fired Randy Mueller, who built the Saints into a dangerous playoff club within months after his arrival in 2000 (the team had won just 18 games total in the four seasons prior). Admittedly, the 2001 season was a stinker. New Orleans was horrendous in December and stumbled to a 7-9 record. But ask anyone in the league: This is no seven-win team in terms of talent. Sure, Mueller signed some clunkers (Albert Connell) and let some good players go for cap reasons (Joe Johnson, La'Roi Glover). But in the words of former Packers GM Ron Wolf, "No one bats .500 in this job. If you hit .333, you're doing a pretty good job."

Mueller did that, acquiring a quarterback of the future (Aaron Brooks) for a third-round pick, building a wide-receiver group (Joe Horn, Jerome Pathon, Donte' Stallworth) from scratch and trying to reconstruct an old defense with young blood like Charlie Clemons and Darren Howard.

Mueller bent the salary cap too much for my taste, spending too much real money on questionable performers. But he hired a firebrand coach, put together a team with attitude, went 17-15 over two years, knew how to work agents, and, in general, was a more-than-competent NFL general manager. When he went into Thursday's meeting with Benson and his advising team, Mueller actually believed he was about to negotiate a new contract with the club. That's what he'd been told. Instead, the shoe dropped.

"Tom told me he wanted a different management style," Mueller said early Thursday afternoon. "I tried to ask him for specifics, but that's what he said -- he just wanted a different management style."

My translation: People in New Orleans had taken to Mueller. He was fluent in all things NFL. He was growing to like New Orleans and New Orleans was growing to like him. On Wednesday, in a poll conducted by a local radio station, 80 percent of callers supported the re-signing of Mueller -- whose contract was due to expire after this year -- to a long-term deal. But the team's season-ticket base was starting to erode due to the NBA's impending return to the city (a doomer proposition, if you ask me). Benson wouldn't have wanted to pay real market value for a good general manager -- in the $1.5 million-plus range. And so the owner whacked Mueller now, in the dead zone of the offseason. Benson will get two weeks of really bad press, but by the time training camp starts, Mueller will be old news.

The problem is that Mueller and coach Jim Haslett were extremely close, and Mueller was the one who brought in the vast majority of meaningful people now in the Saints' front office. So what does Benson do now? Make someone in the organization the interim GM? Give the job to Haslett, who is probably too abrupt and fiery to do justice to the position? Or go outside the franchise? I think he'll take the cheap way out, whatever way that is.

So now Mueller sits, probably for the year, and gets paid by Benson for doing nothing. He sounded stunned three hours after the ax fell.

"I can't figure it out," Mueller said. "When we took over this team, it was a laughingstock, the bone yard of the NFL. Jim's distraught. We just brought [former Chargers coach] Mike Riley in as an assistant, and he's sitting there with his head in his hands. I feel bad for the staff. I feel bad for Jim. I'll be fine. Hopefully somebody out there thinks we did a decent job here and I'll be able to work in the league again."

That's a given. Don't pity Mueller. Instead, send your sympathies to the Saints fans. They've lost a good general manager because their owner is penny wise and pound foolish.

Sports Illustrated senior writer Peter King covers the NFL beat for the magazine and is a regular contributor to CNNSI.com. Check out his Monday Morning Quarterback column every -- and you should see this coming -- Monday morning.

 

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