After a full week to digest his team’s disappointing 4-12 season, Falcons owner Arthur Blank on Monday restated the team’s commitment to power football, a pledge not unrelated to the firing of offensive line coaches Pat Hill and Paul Dunn and defensive line coach Ray Hamilton.
Falcons coach Mike Smith and general manager Thomas Dimitroff spoke to the media last week before the firings were made public and later declined to comment on them.
Blank said player performance and an exposed weaknesses on both sides of the ball were factors in the dismissals.
“And sometimes these coaches that have left, sometimes the message gets stale,” Blank said. “At times, you need even the same message delivered differently by somebody else and perhaps it can be heard differently. Sometimes, it is a different message as well.”
The failure of both offensive and defensive lines contributed heavily to the Falcons’ descent from Super Bowl contender to finishing tied for last place in the NFC South.
The search for replacements is underway. A couple of candidates are already off the board: former Cleveland defensive line coach Joe Cullen was hired Monday by Tampa Bay and Texans defensive line coach Bill Kollar is expected to be retained in Houston.
“I think that (Smith) is looking for coaches that reflect his intensity,” Blank said. “Smitty is a very thoughtful guy … and feels that when he came to the Falcons in 2008, he was committed to playing a certain brand of (power) football, controlling the line of scrimmage offensively and defensively. To some extent, we’ve gotten away from that for a variety of reasons.
“He wants to recommit himself and recommit the team to that. He felt that the coaching changes would give him an opportunity to do that as well as any appropriate changes (to) the roster.”
In addition to the coaching changes, Blank said he would like to see more players with a “capacity to be tough” along the line of scrimmage without relaxing the team’s standards for character that’s been strictly addressed in the post-Michael Vick era.
“It doesn’t mean that we want players that are going to end up in different sections of the newspaper other than the sports section,” Blank said. “But I think we do want players that have the capacity to be tough and as tough as they need to be, to play right up to the line, to the edge of the line. And we need coaches that are prepared to coach them that way as well.”
Blank anticipated that the sixth overall pick in the draft will be used on a lineman.
The Falcons studied the Green Bay, New England, Baltimore, New Orleans and Pittsburgh franchises for some common threads to their sustained winning, Blank said. The variables they found were consistency of ownership; retaining highly competent personnel and coaching staffs; strong salary cap management for rosters built primarily through the draft and supplemented through free agency; and a unity of purpose.
“We spent some time over the last couple of weeks re-validating that work and comparing the success of the most successful clubs in the National Football League against the Falcons over the last six years under (Smith) and (Dimitroff),” Blank said.
The Falcons are tied for sixth in cumulative winning percentage during that period. None of the five clubs ahead of the Falcons have an ownership with less than 10 years in place. Blank is set to enter his 13th season as the team owner.
None of the clubs ahead of the Falcons have a head coach with tenure of less than six years. All five have franchise quarterbacks.
“We certainly have a great franchise quarterback in Matt Ryan,” Blank said.
He also noted that those teams are frugal when it comes to free agency spending.
After what should be an active offseason for his team, Blank is expecting a quick turnaround in 2014.
“I would certainly say a winning season and a playoff season,” Blank said of his expectations for next season. “If I felt for any version of a New York minute that we didn’t have the right leadership and ability and capability in that building to make that happen in 2014, we would make additional changes. I don’t think those changes are necessary.”
