This isn’t the kind of company Kellen Moore expected to keep. The New Orleans Saints head coach is now the team’s first full-time coach to start 0-4 in his debut season since 1967. You have to go all the way back to the Saints’ inaugural 1967 campaign to find the last head coach who started 0-4. That was Tom Fears, who didn’t win a game until Week 8, finishing his first year at 3-11. He went 13-34-2 before being fired midway through the 1970 season.
Of course this doesn’t count interim coaches like Aaron Kromer, who went 0-4 in 2012 before stepping aside for Joe Vitt. When you put Moore up against the other head coaches who were hired to the same role with the same expectations in Saints history, his start is there with Fears at the bottom. Here’s how every first-year Saints head coach performed in their first four games:
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But that’s not to say we’ll be here forever. The team that lost to the Buffalo Bills in Week 4 looked like a different squad than the one the Seattle Seahawks blew out a week earlier. They showed a lot of fight in a rare moral victory, playing a Super Bowl favorite close throughout the game. Better execution and smarter decisions in a couple of moments would have made a difference. What’s most important is that they didn’t give up. For a rebuilding team in their position? You’ll take that.
Sure, standards should be higher. They will be. Once Moore has had time to build this team up with his own players and a viable starter at quarterback, we’ll look at him a little differently. He isn’t there yet. It’s vital he make the changes now — benching chronic underperformers and penalty-prone players — to insure he gets to that point. Or else he’ll stay at the bottom.
This article originally appeared on Saints Wire: Kellen Moore joins miserable company after 0-4 start in Saints debut