Even if Joel Thomas had let his dreams run wild, he would not have foresaw this.
After a one-year stint as the New York Giants running backs coach, Thomas is back with the New Orleans Saints — with whom he coached from 2015-23 — now with an Associate Head Coach title tacked next to his old running backs coach job.
It's not just about the job for Thomas, who last week continued his annual tradition of riding with one of the Mardi Gras super krewes. He is back in the place that both he and his family recognize as home.
"If you put your heart into a certain place, especially here in New Orleans, it loves you back like no other," Thomas said. "I'm getting emotional thinking about it. That's what it's about: Creating memories, creating a home. Even though I wasn't born here, I feel like I was raised here. My kids have been raised here. My wife, she was all in. It was a lot of elation when I found out I could come back home."
Thomas is one of two coaches to return to the team on new head coach Kellen Moore's first staff, with the other being offensive line coach Brendan Nugent, who worked in various roles with the organization from 2015-21. Both of them are excited to be back in their old stomping grounds.
Thomas maintained his connection to the city while he was with the Giants, and made sure when he left the Saints to do so on good terms to keep the door for a potential return open. He just didn't anticipate it would happen this quickly.
Though Thomas and Moore have never worked together, Moore described Thomas as someone whose name was "very prominent around this whole league." For his part, Thomas — who played his collegiate football at the University of Idaho — has long kept tabs on Moore, a Boise State product.
"(The Saints) gave a call to (Giants head coach Brian Daboll), and given my conversations that I've had about this place — my heart is here, my family's heart is here — it came about," Thomas said. "And with my title, it's a promotion, so that's how it ended up working."
Nugent left the team on different terms. He worked his way up from a low-level assistant job to the offensive line coach and run game coordinator, but he was let go when Dennis Allen took over in 2022, and ultimately landed with the Los Angeles Chargers as their offensive line coach.
It was with the Chargers that Nugent met and worked with Moore, who served as Los Angeles' offensive coordinator in 2023.
"It was awesome," Nugent said of his time with Moore. "That's another big part of why I'm excited to be back here is I believe in him. The way we built the offense, the way we did it, the way he called it, all the different aspects of it when we did that in LA. I believe in him, and I'm excited to help him get this thing rolling."
After a year in Seattle, Nugent reunited with Moore in New Orleans, where he'll have the important task of getting the most out of a young offensive line loaded with former first- and second-round picks.
He's been gone long enough to have only coached two current Saints linemen: Erik McCoy and Cesar Ruiz. A third, Landon Young, is currently a free agent.
Nugent found a home in his old neighborhood on the North Shore, and his family will rejoin him later this week. Like Thomas, he still has deep ties to the community that he called home for half a decade.
"This place is a special place," Nugent said. "My two youngest kids were born here; my older two (kids), this is all they know; my wife loves it, so they're about as excited as I am to get back here.
"Sometimes you never know how things are going to work out. I'm just excited to get back to a place I know, an organization I know, a place I love living."