Darren Rizzi doesn't anticipate officially interviewing for the New Orleans Saints' vacant head coaching position until sometime next week.
Unofficially, Rizzi began sharing some of the talking points of his campaign Monday. New Orleans finished 5-12 this season, 3-5 after Rizzi was named interim head coach Nov. 4.
"Let's be honest: It wasn't a blank canvas when I took over," Rizzi said. "There was a lot of painting already on the page, so I think when you start from scratch with anything and you can kind of take a step back and you have time to prepare and you have time to do things in this profession, whether that's roster or it's staff – it's all those things. It's putting all those things in place.
"I did what I thought was best at the time with the circumstances that we had, whether that was our coaching staff or that was the locker room or that was the roster, there's only so m any things you can do in the middle of it, though. Once you get in the middle of a journey and you're halfway through, it's a little bit hard to change."
And Rizzi said there obviously must be change for the Saints, and he's willing to oversee it if he's named head coach.
"Change needs to take place; that's going to happen," he said. "It's going to happen in some way, shape or form. How big or how little, that remains to be seen but there needs to be change.
"There needs to be some change across the board – locker room, roster, coaches, all that. We're all aware of that. The old 'wipe-the-slate-clean,' there's a bunch of different ways you can go with that.
"A whole new everybody – front office, coaches, players – sometimes that doesn't' work either. If you look at the history of this league, the teams that make the least amount of changes over the course of time are actually the most successful."
Rizzi noted Pittsburgh, which has had three head coaches since 1969, as such a franchise.
"They kind of modify and mold their changes year to year," he said. "There's a lot of teams that make sweeping changes all the time in our league, every three or four years they kind of reshuffle again and maybe haven't had as much success.
"My own opinion, I think there's a delicate balance. I think there's change that needs to be made, no doubt. We went 5-12. So there needs to be change. At the same time, I think there's a lot of strengths in this building. I think there's things that we do well. So I think there's a delicate balance on the things that you do change."
The upcoming interview will be the second time Rizzi has interviewed to be Saints head coach. He also was a candidate when Allen was hired in 2022. This Rizzi is different than that Rizzi.
"The biggest thing I've learned is the on-field coaching part of it," he said. "I had a plan going in the last time I interviewed; what I didn't have was, I didn't have experience of coaching eight games on the sideline.
"The one thing I can say this go around is, I do have some on-field experience in this league on the sideline, taking a team through these last eight games. I definitely learned managing the game and there are some things that during the course of the game that we were able to do.
"When you're in the seat – and you hear all the stories from other head coaches about the things you have to deal with in the building and there's kind of that funnel from the building that comes to your desk – you probably don't have as good of an appreciation of that until you're in that seat.
"I have a newfound respect for that position because you're obviously dealing with the whole building. You're dealing with not only the players, you're dealing with the coaching staff, you're dealing with all the departments that touch the players and touch the building."
