The Sons of Anarchy are coming to Bourbon Street.
Adam Schefter of ESPN reports that the Saints plan to hire Rob Ryan to be the team’s next defensive coordinator.
Ryan, who notoriously boasted he’d have a new job in “like five minutes” after being fired by the Cowboys in January, eventually was hired by the Rams. But it quickly fell through, putting him back on the market.
Ryan will bring the 3-4 defense to New Orleans, and presumably his brash Ryan DNA. It necessarily will require coach Sean Payton to be more involved in policing the defense than he was when Gregg Williams served as defensive coordinator and created a mess via an illegal pay-for-performance/bounty program.
Hopefully for the Saints’ sake, Williams and Ryan will have only one thing in common -- both were defensive coordinators in St. Louis, but neither actually ever worked a single practice or game on behalf of the team.
UPDATE 9:09 p.m. ET: Larry Holder of the New Orleans Times-Picayune reports that Ryan will interview Friday, and that Georgia defensive coordinator Todd Grantham will interview on Thursday. Which suggests that the Ryan hire isn’t quite a done deal. Just like it wasn’t in St. Louis.