The 1996 New Orleans Saints season was the team’s 30th as a member of the

National Football League The National Football League (NFL) is a professional American football league that consists of 32 teams, divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). The NFL is one of the ...

. They were unable to match their previous season's output of 7–9 and finished with the second-worst sixteen-game record in franchise history at 3–13. The team failed to qualify for the playoffs for the fourth straight year. Jim Mora, who had been the team’s head coach since 1986, resigned from his position after eight games with a 2-6 record to that point and was replaced by linebackers coach

Rick Venturi Rick Venturi (born February 23, 1946) is a former American football player, coach and current broadcaster. He served as the head coach at Northwestern University and as longtime National Football League assistant coach known for his defense. ...

, who went 1-7 to close the season. Mora’s resignation came one day after the Saints lost to the Carolina Panthers, where he ripped into his team’s performance during the game, calling it “horseshit” and “embarrassing” and saying the Saints could not do “diddley poo” offensively. The week 14 game vs. the

St. Louis Rams The St. Louis Rams were a professional American football team of the National Football League (NFL). They played in St. Louis from 1995 to the 2015 season, before moving back to Los Angeles, where the team had played from 1946 to 1994. The arri ...

drew a minuscule 26,310, the lowest-attended home game in Saints history, and 3,335 fewer than a

1987 File:1987 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: The MS Herald of Free Enterprise capsizes after leaving the Port of Zeebrugge in Belgium, killing 193; Northwest Airlines Flight 255 crashes after takeoff from Detroit Metropolitan Airport, k ...

game vs. the Rams played with

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due to that season's strike by the

National Football League Players Association The National Football League Players Association, or NFLPA, is a labor union representing National Football League (NFL) players. The NFLPA, which has headquarters in Washington, D.C., is led by president J. C. Tretter and executive director De ...

Offseason

NFL Draft

Personnel

Staff

Roster

Regular season

Schedule

Standings

References

New Orleans Saints seasons New Orleans Saints Season, 1996

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