Being set to hire 49ers pass-game coordinator Klint Kubiak as their next OC, the Saints will continue to bid farewell to assistants on that side of the ball. Quarterbacks coach Ronald Curry will follow Pete Carmichael and Doug Marrone out of New Orleans.
Curry has already landed a gig elsewhere. The Bills are expected to hire him to be their next QBs coach and pass-game coordinator, KPRC2’s Aaron Wilson reports. Joe Brady entered last season in as Buffalo’s QBs coach but was bumped up to OC following the team’s Ken Dorsey firing. With Brady now in the full-time OC position, the AFC East champions had a vacancy.
NOLA.com’s Jeff Duncan initially reported Curry was not going to be part of the Saints’ 2024 staff. The Saints offered to keep Curry on as their wide receivers coach, according to NewOrleans.football’s Nick Underhill. Curry served as the team’s wideouts coach from 2018-20, but his departure to mentor Josh Allen is understandable, especially considering a new OC is coming to New Orleans. As of now, the only Saints position coaches still in place on offense are O-line coach Jahri Evans and tight ends coach Clancy Barone.
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A former NFL wide receiver, Curry had been with the Saints since 2016. Sean Payton hired Curry, a former college quarterback at North Carolina, and steadily promoted him over the years. Curry became New Orleans’ QBs coach in 2021 and worked in that role over the past three seasons. Curry and Brady overlapped as Saints assistants from 2017-18, undoubtedly helping lead to the former’s anticipated appointment in Buffalo.
The Saints were among the teams to interview Curry for an offensive coordinator post over the past two years, meeting with their longtime assistant about the job that is expected to go to Kubiak. The Broncos and Buccaneers met with the 44-year-old assistant about their OC gigs in 2023 as well.
Buffalo’s OC job being tied to Allen could certainly make Brady a key part of the 2025 HC carousel, thus putting Curry in a position to potentially become a coordinator in Buffalo. Allen will represent a new tier of QB talent for Curry, who coached the likes of Jameis Winston, Taysom Hill, Trevor Siemian and Andy Dalton in New Orleans before the Derek Carr signing. Each post-Drew Brees option had moments of success, however.
Dalton threw 18 TD passes compared to nine INTs, while averaging a career-best 7.6 yards per attempt. That landed the 2022 Saints starter a nice QB2 offer from the Panthers. Before suffering an ACL tear, Winston finished with a 14-3 TD-INT ratio in 2021; he did so with a basement-level receiving corps. Though, the former No. 1 overall pick could not match that form in 2022. Carr produced an uneven 2023, still improving down the stretch and finishing 16th in QBR. Carr’s contract aside, the Saints also continued to make Hill a regular part of their QB equation in 2023.
Why would anyone associated with the Saints offense last year inspire confidence? This hire seems like a major misfire…