Alvin Kamara sparks trade speculation with Tweet and critique of team’s discipline

Alvin Kamara has made it clear that the current Saints culture isn’t a winning one.

The hope was that when head coach Sean Payton stepped down from his post with the New Orleans Saints, hiring from within his staff would allow the strong winning culture to remain intact. Early returns on that are looking not so good.

Look no further than the Saints’ two wins heading into eight weeks for the bottom-line proof, but we’re starting to hear it from key players as well. Dennis Allen’s leadership seems to be failing early on in New Orleans.

Here’s what Alvin Kamara had to say on the lack of discipline he’s seen with the team to Katherine Terrell:

Alvin Kamara vented to the media, and it might be what the Saints needed

Kamara recently addressed the team and also revealed a lot of his qualms with the media. Normally you want to keep internal critiques inside the locker room doors, but Alvin Kamara’s comments might help light a needed fire to get the team back on track.

The Tweet above from Kamara was a part of a thread of quotes. Here’s the full snippet:

"“You know, I think, and I kind of said it in the locker room, I saw that was kind of a thing. But I think, the years we’ve been good, it’s been like a certain swagger and a certain confidence, you know, about the offense… Even when we were down, it was never like we were looking at the score. It was like, ‘Well, alright, shit, lets go play football.’ It wasnt a score thing, it wasnt like, what the other team was doing thing. It’s like, lets go out and execute, & shit, we’re gonna like the result… I feel like. just honestly, we haven’t really been playing like that. It’s been like, we kind of, it’s just of a little bit of a panic, a little bit of a ‘Oh shit, we’re down.’ Like man, we don’t play like that. I still don’t have that kind of mentality.”"

Asked about why he addressed the team, he said:

"“Because! It was annoying. Im sick of that. Im not used to losing. Nothing in life when it comes to me, I think personally, says loser. … I’ve always overcome and climbed out and clawed my way and fought my way to be on top of any situation.”"

Now, here’s one area that will get read between the lines quite a bit over the coming days with the NFL Trade Deadline coming up. This reads sort of like a threat that Kamara wants out. But listening to the video, it sounds more like a statement of logic than a signal that he wants out of New Orleans:

It’s alarming to hear that Kamara feels like practices are too relaxed and issues aren’t being fixed there, especially when you consider that Nick Underhill has reported on NewOrleans.football (subscription required) earlier this season that one of the ways in which Dennis Allen was different from Payton is he approaches practices with more intensity, and games from a more relaxed standpoint.

To make matters worse, Alvin Kamara tweeted this after some lesser-known accounts said that Eagles GM Howie Roseman was looking to acquire Kamara:

Roseman has been doing whatever he can to keep his undefeated team in position to win the Super Bowl. Before the season, he struck a deal with the Saints to acquire defensive end C.J. Gardner-Johnson. This week he acquired pass rusher Robert Quinn.

For now there seem to be weak legs to the Kamara rumors, if we can even call them that. But there are a lot of tea leaves to be read.