Saints fire T.J. Paganetti, Brendan Nugent takes run game
The news came out Monday morning, and it was about the one thing that has sunk this Saints season more than anything else.
Coming off the bye, the #Saints made a significant change, moving on from run game coordinator T. J. Paganetti, sources say. Run-game issues have plagued the team this year.
Look at the last game before the bye. New Orleans lost 16-10 to the Steelers in Paris and ran 17 times for 18 yards. According to ESPN, that was the franchise's worst rushing day since an 11-yard game in 1999. It doesn't get much uglier than that. The Saints are 2-5, last in the NFC South, and averaging 86 rushing yards a game. Somebody was going to pay for it, and it was the guy with run game in his job title.
The Saints have parted ways with run game coordinator TJ Paganetti, according to sources. Paganetti came from Philadelphia, where he helped architect the run game and was part of developing one of the league’s best offensive lines
That's what makes this one sting. Paganetti was one of the coaches Kellen Moore brought with him from Philadelphia when he took the Saints job in 2025. Pro Football Rumors notes Paganetti first got to the Eagles in 2013 as an analyst, then came back for a second stint and was their running game specialist in 2023 and 2024, which was the Philly run game everybody spent the last few years trying to copy. Moore wanted that exact system in New Orleans. 8 games into year 2, it's not working, and the man who built it is out.
Moore didn't make it sound like an emergency when he talked about it Monday. He went with the usual corporate language.
Kellen Moore: "We needed to make a few adjustments." "This will be beneficial to the workflow of our staff."
Here's what actually changes. Offensive line coach Brendan Nugent takes over the run game. He and Paganetti had been splitting the pregame run-game prep, so this is less of a new hire and more of Nugent's job getting bigger.
Brendan Nugent will now lead the run game. He's been giving the presentations to the players all season. So he'll keep doing that install and do even more to lead that process.
That's the Saints basically admitting the players will hear the same voice in the meeting room, just with Paganetti gone from the process behind it. Whether that fixes 18 yards on 17 carries is a fair question. When the line coach is already the guy teaching the scheme, the problem probably isn't how the install gets presented.
Moore said there will be other changes to how the staff operates but he wants to keep that in house
Moore saying there will be more changes but keeping them in house is the part to watch. It's the first real staff shakeup of his tenure, after he kept most of the staff together through a 6-11 finish last year. It also lands in a division that's already firing people, as Greg Auman pointed out. If the run game is still stuck after the bye, the next change probably won't be a coordinator 2 levels below the head coach.
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