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Monday, November 13, 2006
Mora runs a poorly coached team
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Flowery Branch — A coach can handle consecutive losses to patently inferior opposition in one of two ways: He can go all rah-rah, or he can give the timeworn your-jobs-are-on-the-line speech. Jim Mora has chosen to accentuate the positive, saying Monday: “A lot of people would say the ship is sinking, but I don’t. I love it. … We’re going to fight.”
And maybe that’s the way, even after egregious outings against Detroit and Cleveland, he really feels. Then again, maybe Mora isn’t taking the vocational-security tack because he knows the job on the line is his.
Arthur Blank didn’t pay to assemble a band of scrappers. He and Rich McKay built this gifted team to win big. Blank in July: “We have a sense of urgency to do better now. … Our offseason moves aren’t indicative that we’re [building for some far-off future].”
Yet here the Falcons sit, 5-4 with a team that seems to play a different way every Sunday. Sometimes the pass defense fails (Pittsburgh, Detroit). Other times it’s the run defense (New York). Sometimes the Falcons can’t throw (New York, Detroit). Other times they can (Pittsburgh, Cincinnati). Sometimes they even throw too much (Cleveland).
We’ve asked this before, but after nine oscillating outings, there seems only one answer. Q: What are the Falcons? A: Not particularly well coached.
Mora won 18 of his first 26 games, a bright young thing who’d hit the ground running. But the Falcons are 7-10 since, and more and more Mora and his staff seem incapable of fitting resources to scheme. There’ll come a game that appears a great leap forward — Blank described Vick’s passing against Cincinnati as “a breakthrough” — but gains are never consolidated. The weeks roll on and the Falcons keep alternating assured performances with addled ones, and that’s a function (or a dysfunction) of coaching.
“We all need a little adversity to find out what we’re all about,” Mora said Monday, but the man paying Mora’s salary might see this latest dip differently. At 7-2, the Falcons would be alone in second place in the NFC and staring at a first-round bye. Instead they’re no lock to pluck even the last wild-card spot.
Mora: “We’re right in the thick of this thing. … We’re in a dogfight.” Indeed, he used the word “dogfight” at least a half-dozen times, and he closed his address with “Fight on.” (Sort of like Dan Rather signing off with “Courage.”) Of his team’s injuries, Mora said: “We’ll fight to the bitter end with whoever’s standing. And we’d better fight. If I don’t see a guy fighting, he might not be playing.”
Might not?
Perhaps Mora’s men will respond to his gentle urging. But after last season’s collapse and the Falcons’ mood swings of the past five weeks, it’s reasonable to wonder if they still believe in this coach and his coordinators. Say what you will about Dan Reeves, but his teams played pretty much the same way every time. For reasons unclear, Mora’s 2006 team has a fainter signature than in his giddy inaugural season, and these Falcons are more talented than in their run to the NFC championship game.
It’s possible Mora could survive another non-playoff finish. (The rash of injuries, Patrick Kerney’s being the latest, might buy him another season, although Blank fired Reeves the year Michael Vick broke his leg.) It’s also possible the owner might decide to cut his accumulating losses and start anew.
And surely Blank has to be looking toward Chicago and wondering if Lovie Smith, whom the Falcons interviewed, wasn’t the better choice. The Bears under Smith lost 11 of their first 16 games but have won 19 of 26 since, and nobody could watch that ferocious team today and say it isn’t well coached.
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