Even with the wacky (sub)standards established by the New Orleans Saints franchise in the past during three and a half decades of mostly miserable performances on the field and in the front office, the sudden events of Thursday afternoon were just shy of incomprehensible.

Less than four months before the Saints begin their 2002 regular season, the team is minus a general manager, with Randy Mueller unceremoniously dumped by owner Tom Benson in a transfer of power. Benson plans to function for now as his own general manager. However, no one expects that to be more than a temporary fix by a guy who claims he wants to be more hands-on, but would rather someone else do most of the heavy lifting that accompanies building a consistent winner.

		Friday, May 10 More on Mueller New Orleans owner Tom Benson can make all the excuses he wants for his abrupt Thursday dismissal of general manager Randy Mueller but, the bottom line is, he simply didn't like the guy. And since it's his team, Benson had the right to show Mueller the door, and, yeah, to install himself as the general manager. We've taken some shots at Mueller in this space over several months, but never relish anyone losing his job, and Benson apparently saw some of the same management flaws. There was a smugness about Mueller that was off-putting at times and he had a bad habit of keeping his own counsel and not heeding input from others. He rolled the dice on a few character risks other people urged him to avoid, and the gambles sometimes blew up in his face, like the signing of wide receiver Albert Connell last spring. Connell had good hands but, as it turned out, he used them more for plucking money out of teammates' pockets than for snatching passes out of the air. That is not to say that Benson's move in dumping Mueller wasn't unusual, especially since he offered him a contract extension a few months ago, and since he allowed the general manager to stump the state trying to sell tickets just days before his dismissal. There are indications that Mueller, a control-type guy who actually had cameras installed in the coaching staff meeting rooms ("Big Saint is Watching") much to the dismay of staffers, was trying to make inroads into the business side of the New Orleans operation. Bad move, since Benson is fiercely loyal to Arnold Fielkow, his director of business administration. For now, head coach and longtime Mueller ally Jim Haslett, is safe. But to ensure that he has a shot at lasting beyond this season, look for Haslett to suggest Benson consider Buffalo director of football operations Tom Modrak for the general manager post. Modrak is a friend of Haslett, and when he was in Philadelphia, recommended the Eagles hire him in 1999, before club officials decided on Andy Reid as the guy. Modrak is a terrific football man and he would bring instant respect to the seemingly directionless Saints. Another man who should be considered is longtime NFL personnel chief Ken Herock, who is familiar with the Saints and the division from his long tenure in Atlanta. --Taken from Tip Sheet.

In a late afternoon news conference, Benson suggested he will get "back to the nitty-gritty," the day-to-day operations of the football team. But what Benson most wants to do is win football games and then parade around the floor of the Superdome with his parasol. That, folks, is the nitty. The gritty will be someone else's chore.

But coming off a disappointing 2001 campaign in which New Orleans lost its final four games, and by a remarkable average of 40 points (no, that's not a typo), Benson sent an unmistakable message that no job is safe after such a collapse of monumental proportion.

And given the legion of Mueller loyalists in the New Orleans football hierarchy, a cadre of carpetbaggers who made their way South with him from Seattle when he was hired as the general manager in 2000, it's fair to say the city might be renamed The Big Uneasy.

"Walking on eggshells?" responded one middle-level management type Thursday, a few hours after Mueller had been booted onto Poydras Street. "That's an understatement, believe me, given what happened. And everybody figures there's more to come. "

Whether the often intemperate Benson enacts yet another housecleaning -- it's been only two years, after all, since he drummed out president/general manager Billy Kuharich and head coach Mike Ditka -- remains to be seen. But in a city where the favorite chant of the Superdome denizens was "Who Dat?" a bigger question now might be "Who's Next?"

As in, who might follow Mueller out the door, and who will come in to replace him as the Saints move into just the latest period of uncertainty.

There is no denying that Mueller, overrated in the eyes of this columnist but still a man who shepherded the team to a division title in 2000 and who was named as the league's executive of the year for those efforts, had established a power base with the management personnel he brought with him from his Seattle tenure.

The director of player personnel was Rick Mueller, his brother. Rick Thompson and Pat Mondock, two former Seahawks officials, were the college scouting coordinator and the regional scouting supervisor, respectively. All three of the team's pro scouts worked with Mueller in Seattle. Ditto the director of football administration, Mickey Loomis, the man who serves as primary contract negotiator.

And, of course, head coach Jim Haslett was hand picked by ol' friend Mueller to come in and provide the team a toughness and sense of urgency it previously lacked.

It was, at least at first blush, a relatively cozy cocoon of security with which Mueller surrounded himself. It was, seemingly, a deep-rooted power base. But anyone who knows New Orleans fully understands that the city is built below sea level and, no matter how deep you sink the supports, the silt is forever eroding around them.

Scoop up a handful of dirt in New Orleans, and it crumbles, disintegrating right between your fingers. That's why the city buries its dead above ground, in part why Benson and a band of his own loyalists delivered an "R.I.P." to Mueller on Thursday in a move that did indeed send rippling shockwaves around the league.

Only a few months ago, Benson spoke of trying to sign Mueller and Haslett to contract extensions, because his two principle football experts ranked among the NFL's lowest paid officials at their positions. Then again, Benson permitted Mueller to interview with new Atlanta owner Arthur Blank for a general manager job that remains unfilled.

A side note here to all those conspiracy theorists who Thursday attempted to link the departures of Mueller from New Orleans and general manager Harold Richardson from the Falcons: That the two exits occurred on the same day was coincidence and nothing more. For all intents and purposes, Richardson functioned as the Atlanta capologist, and not as a traditional general manager. Might the suddenly unemployed Mueller now call Blank and renew his candidacy for the Atlanta job? Perhaps, but the scuttlebutt is that, with Bobby Beathard now aboard as a consultant, the Falcons will wait until after the '02 campaign to hire a general manager.

So what to make of the New Orleans situation and of the NFL's most inaptly nicknamed franchise? Haslett is entering the final year of his three-year contract, but Benson insisted Thursday he wants him to stay. Some of the New Orleans assistant coaches noted Thursday evening Haslett has apprised them they might be wise to sign the contract extensions on their desks, before Benson interprets any hesitation as a possible desire to leave.

In a franchise whose hallmark has always been the bizarre, anything is possible. But the bottom line for Benson, who needs to fill seats and garner support for the state-subsidized improvements to the not-so-super Superdome, is wins. The glow of the NFC West title in 2000 is gone and now so is the man who engineered the turnaround.

Amid rumors that Mueller was the loser in a quiet power struggle with Arnold Feilkow, who is the team's director of administration and ostensibly Benson's first lieutenant, the owner insisted there was no front office tug-o'-war. Instead, he offered that Mueller had made some decision without first consulting him.

Indeed, in his zeal to create a winner -- and perhaps to prove his mettle to some of the old-guard and so-called NFL "football men" who viewed him as an interloper and accidental tourist -- Mueller made some egregious errors of judgment. For every trade acquisition of quarterback Aaron Brooks it seemed there was an ill-fated addition, like the signing of wideout Albert Connell, a locker room pickpocket as it turned out.

But coming off an excellent draft, one in which each of the first three players selected figures to be a starter as a rookie, it appeared Mueller was safe for now. Turns out that he wasn't. Turns out, as usual when it comes to all things Saints-related, there was another agenda in place. There will never be, in New Orleans, a holiday known as All Saints Day.

Certainly there wasn't Thursday, when the franchise was again turned into turmoil, and the exclamation point of draft day became another big question mark.

Who dat, indeed. And where are they headed?

Len Pasquarelli is a senior writer for ESPN.com.