In my opinion, the one thing that has sunk this franchise has been its inability to treat the situation as a rebuild. The whole ‘win from now on’ nonsense and the idea that they can snap back with a few high priced free agents were tactics that just dug the hole deeper.
When Sean Payton came in last season, he didn’t do much other than stabilize key areas with many free agents he knew could perform the way he needed them to. The lack of draft capital handicapped his first year a bit there too, but still was able to pick up some key free agents.