Joe Vitt Will Take Over as Saints’ Interim Coach Monday at LinesMaker

Joe Vitt Will Take Over as Saints’ Interim Coach Monday

New Orleans Saints assis­tant Joe Vitt will assume sus­pended coach Sean Payton’s day-to-day duties, effec­tive Mon­day, the team announced.

“It is impor­tant that we keep Sean Payton’s phi­los­o­phy front and cen­ter dur­ing this sea­son,” Saints gen­eral man­ager Mickey Loomis said in a state­ment released by the team Thurs­day. “Sean has been the dri­ving force behind the tremen­dous suc­cess our team has enjoyed dur­ing the past six years, (and) his lead­er­ship will be missed. But we need to set a course of action that gives us the best chance to win this sea­son with­out our head coach, and that is why I am announc­ing today that Joe Vitt will assume Sean’s duties.”

NFL Com­mis­sioner Roger Good­ell sus­pended Pay­ton for the entire 2012 NFL sea­son for vio­la­tions of the league’s bounty rule over a three-year period between 2009 and 2011. Vitt, who coaches the Saints’ line­back­ers, will serve a six-game sus­pen­sion once the sea­son starts.

The Saints aren’t lean­ing toward any par­tic­u­lar can­di­date to replace Vitt when he begins serv­ing his sus­pen­sion, a source famil­iar with the team’s decision-making process told NFL.com’s Steve Wyche. The Saints will go through the off­sea­son before mak­ing that deci­sion, although the lead­ing can­di­dates are defen­sive coor­di­na­tor Steve Spag­n­uolo, offen­sive coor­di­na­tor Pete Carmichael and offen­sive line coach Aaron Kromer.

What could help the Saints decide who will run things once the sea­son starts is that they have five pre­sea­son games — as opposed to the four that most teams have — because they play in the Aug. 5 Hall of Fame Game against the Ari­zona Car­di­nals. That addi­tional game could help coaches become more famil­iar with the tran­si­tion that awaits once Vitt has to step aside.

The Saints’ “bounty” pro­gram offered cash bonuses for big hits that knocked tar­geted oppo­nents out of games or hurt them enough that they required help get­ting to the sideline.

For­mer Saints defen­sive coor­di­na­tor Gregg Williams, who ran the pro­gram and now is with the St. Louis Rams, didn’t appeal his indef­i­nite suspension.

Vitt has been an interim coach before, going 4–7 with the St. Louis Rams in 2005 while Mike Martz was side­lined with endocarditis.

“We con­sid­ered a num­ber of great options to han­dle Payton’s duties both inter­nally and exter­nally, but believe this will pro­vide the most seam­less tran­si­tion for our play­ers and our coach­ing staff, allow­ing our offen­sive and defen­sive staffs to remain intact with the fewest changes,” said Loomis, who must serve an eight-game sus­pen­sion once the sea­son starts. “This is the same struc­ture we used last sea­son dur­ing Sean’s knee injury.”

Added Saints owner Tom Ben­son: “This is about our pro­gram, and the con­tin­ued suc­cess of our pro­gram. Joe has been part of build­ing our suc­cess along with our head coach, Sean Pay­ton, and our gen­eral man­ager, Mickey Loomis. We are look­ing for­ward to the start of the off­sea­son pro­gram, the NFL Draft, our mini­camps and train­ing camp. We are look­ing for­ward to the start of our sea­son, as I know that all of our fans are, and we are look­ing for­ward to com­pet­ing and win­ning a cham­pi­onship right here in our own city, in our own sta­dium this year.”

Our sports betting news features unique sports betting articles as well as current sports news compiled from leading wire services. This arti­cle was dis­trib­uted by Syn­di­cated Sports news wire and aggre­ga­tion ser­vice, For more NFL news see: Joe Vitt will take over as Saints’ interim coach Mon­day.

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• Saints Coach Pay­ton Meets With Good­ell After Vitt’s Appeal
• Ex-Rams Coach Spag­n­uolo Agrees to Become Saints DC

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