Paganetti Is Out. The Run Game Problem Isn't.

The Saints used their bye week to make their first coaching change of the season, firing run-game coordinator T.J. Paganetti. The move was reported by NFL Network's Ian Rapoport and confirmed by the team. New Orleans cited the Paris loss as the breaking point.

The timing is clean enough — a bye week dismissal, no game to disrupt — but the logic is harder to follow. Kendre Miller has 181 rushing yards and two touchdowns across seven games, and Travis Etienne has been functional in limited work since joining the backfield. The ground game is not the reason this team is 2–5. The defense is giving up points faster than the offense can answer them, the Superdome has become a place where the Saints lose, and Mickey Loomis was publicly asking for patience just two weeks ago. Firing a position coordinator in that context is an answer to a question nobody was asking loudly.

What it signals, though, is real: the organization is not going to sit still through 10 more games of this. Whether that restlessness produces anything useful before the elimination number hits zero is a different matter entirely.