As the Saints struggled to a 7-9 record and exclusion from the playoffs in 2014, at least some critics couldn’t resist tracing the mediocrity of the team New Orleans fielded to where it spent most of its preseason training camp: The Greenbrier, a luxury golf resort.
The temperatures were mild and the air was cool at the site, situated in the Allegheny Mountains of White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. Some outsiders surmised that all perhaps made the team too soft, and that was fatal when the Saints failed to close out four games that they lost late and by between one and three points, defeats that contributed to the demise of New Orleans’ postseason chances.
Saints coach Sean Payton has never given even the slightest shred of credit to that notion. And on Monday, a day after the Saints won their season finale at Tampa Bay (2-14) by a score of 23-20, Payton didn’t break character, saying it’d be “almost an excuse” to re-evaluate the decision to hold training camp at The Greenbrier through at least 2016.
“I think the trick is making sure …, ‘Are we just changing to change?'” Payton said in a news conference. “Smart, disciplined, tough — that environment can exist anywhere.
“What’s important is that we’re looking closely at ways to fix the things kept us from winning games and making sure that we’re not fixing something that wasn’t part of the problem.”
As he has all season, Payton blamed factors such as an ineffective defense and a turnover-prone offense as things that prevented the Saints from winning consistently.
The defense allowed the second-most yards in the NFL. It permitted opponents to convert third-down situations at the second-highest rate (46.05 percent), a clear indication of an inability to limit teams to punts or at least field goals. And it created more takeaways than only five of the NFL’s 32 teams.
On offense, while the Saints gained the most yards in the NFL, they had fewer giveaways than only four teams. It didn’t matter where the Saints hosted training camp — they’d not overcome such mistakes in the regular season, Payton contends.
That may not satisfy any Saints fans who are disgruntled because of 2014. However, in the months after having training camp at a site where there was no indoor facility, the Saints won as many games outdoors (four) as they did in the 2012 and 2013 regular season combined.
Correlation isn’t automatically causation, of course; but that sort of fact must be considered if the Saints’ overall mark this year is as it pertains to The Greenbrier.