NEW ORLEANS — New Orleans Saints interim coach Darren Rizzi is unapologetically himself.
When he took over after Dennis Allen was fired on Nov. 4, he said he tends to wear his heart on his sleeve. In his first team meeting following Allen’s departure, Rizzi brought in a shovel as a prop to demonstrate how the Saints needed to dig themselves out of a hole after seven straight losses.
And then there’s the time Rizzi casually told reporters that he clogged the toilet at the Caesars Superdome the day of his first win as Saints coach.
“Everyone’s going to have their own personal touch,” Rizzi said upon taking his new job. “The best advice I’ve been given by guys who have been in this situation before is be yourself. I really don’t know how not to be myself. There’s really nothing phony about me.”
It has been three weeks since Rizzi went from special teams coordinator to interim head coach. In that time, he rearranged the locker room, changed the practice schedule and made running back Alvin Kamara a permanent team captain. The shovel he brought to the first meeting has now evolved into a full costume that he wears to illustrate his point of showing up for work every day until the job is done.
“I look like Bob the Builder by the way, in front of the room, just for the record, for those who’ve seen Bob the Builder,” Rizzi joked last week. “You can get a good visual of me right now.”
Rizzi has no problem dressing up as a cartoon character if it gets results. So far, his tactics have helped the Saints get off to a 2-0 start and kept their hopes alive in the NFC South. New Orleans (4-7) has six games remaining, and the team will attempt to keep Rizzi’s record unblemished starting with the Los Angeles Rams (5-6) on Sunday (4:05 p.m. ET, Fox).
Rizzi said he knows that he can’t make sweeping changes in the middle of a season, so he’s tried to implement as many of his own small touches as he can.
One of those ideas included the props that started as a way to get the players’ attention after weeks of losses. Now, Rizzi admits, it’s taken on a life of its own. Rizzi started with the shovel, added a hard hat the next day and then came into another meeting with a construction vest.
Saints tight end Juwan Johnson said every prop has had some sort of symbolism to that week’s theme.
“He had a whole bunch of stuff to let guys know when you come to work, you have to bring things so you can finish. You don’t just show up and finish. It’s all in the little things that you do,” Johnson said. ” … And he kind of made an analogy of just hammering away. When people say hammering away, that means you’re finishing the job.”
Rizzi added a level as a prop in the last meeting before they beat the Cleveland Browns. The reasoning behind it was to illustrate how things could be fixed if players just did their small parts every day.
“Bringing your lunch pail to work every day. The blue collar mentality. It’s kind of what I grew up with, quite frankly. And just that fighter mentality. You’re going to show up every day and you’re going to go to work and the job’s not going to take care of itself. You got to get the work done,” Rizzi said. “Last week we talked about finish and I thought the level was a really good symbolic thing … You don’t use a level on day one when you rip a building down, you use a level at the end to make sure you finish off the work and the job is done.”
While Rizzi, 54, hasn’t been afraid to let loose, he hasn’t been flying by the seat of his pants with the Saints. Rizzi has made it clear that he would like to be an NFL head coach one day, and he’s given a lot of thought about how he would run a team if he had the job permanently.
He outlined those plans when he interviewed for the Saints vacancy in 2022 and the Miami Dolphins vacancy in 2019. Rizzi has mentioned his core principles publicly many times as well, stressing accountability and “doing your 1/11th” as part of a team.
Rizzi’s players over his 16 years of NFL coaching appeared to buy into his methods when he was a coordinator for the Dolphins and Saints. When he interviewed for the Dolphins opening in 2019, Hall of Fame defensive end Jason Taylor wrote on “X” that “it’s about time someone recognizes how good Darren Rizzi is.”
“Glad to see he’s getting a look,” Taylor wrote at the time. “Played for him and have known him for years. Great coach, leader, pro and teacher. Demands accountability and respect.”
Those jobs ultimately went to Allen and now Minnesota Vikings defensive coordinator Brian Flores, but Rizzi hasn’t given up on trying again one day. That makes the remainder of the Saints’ season an extended audition for Rizzi, whose previous head coaching experience is limited to stints at the University of New Haven and the University of Rhode Island.
Rizzi has mentioned the first “wave” of emotion the team had to get past after Allen was dismissed. Now, he must keep the team on the winning track for the final six weeks of the regular season to prove he might be able to lead them beyond 2024.
According to Saints quarterback Derek Carr, Rizzi has the players believing he can keep it up past these initial first weeks.
“I think he has a … very good feel on how to deal with this generation of player. And he’s doing it really well,” Carr said. “… I’ve been around a few guys that are really good at the way that they love their team and love their players, but can demand from them and guys will appreciate and respond. And that’s a fine line to walk. And he walks it really well.
“And so I think that he’s definitely had an impact on our football team for sure. And I’m excited for him and we want to keep winning so that maybe he gets a chance to be the coach here for a long time. And so that’s what we want as players. And so hopefully we can continue to have success, keep winning and give him that opportunity.”
