When a team fires its coach but keeps the general manager, that team is saying, “We believe we’re more talented than we’ve played.” When an owner says – as Arthur Blank did after hiring Dan Quinn – that his team isn’t in rebuilding mode and his intent is to “win now,” he’s saying, “We’ve got the players.”
Over the past six games, all of them losses, so little talent has been brought to bear that Blank’s Falcons haven’t won once. If he believes – and I know he does – that his team is in better hands with Quinn than Mike Smith, why is it 6-7? (We note that Smith went 11-5 in Year 1 with a rookie quarterback. We note also that Smith’s Falcons never lost six in a row.)
Quinn shouldn’t get a pass. He’s the coach. He has control of the 53-man roster. Still, such final say means little if the players under contract aren’t very good. Most of these aren’t.
Call the roll: An offensive line with a flimsy midriff; no receiver of worth beyond Julio Jones; lousy linebackers; nondescript safeties; no pass rushers beyond the promise of Vic Beasley Jr., who needs seven sacks over the final three games to deliver on his stated rookie goal of being “a double-digit sack guy.”
All of which is to say: Thomas Dimitroff is surely gone. Blank should have fired him when he canned Smith, but the GM was unaccountably retained. We see now that Quinn can do no more with these resources than his predecessor. Only five players from Dimitroff’s first five drafts remain, one being the punter. That’s an epic managerial fail. And if Dimitroff is out, there’s no reason to keep Scott Pioli, whose influence increased over the offseason. Pioli didn’t trip the light fantastic as Kansas City’s general manager, did he?
New personnel men can’t be the end of it, though. The Falcons’ offense – the best thing about this team under Smith – has come unstrung. Kyle Shanahan’s defenders, assuming any exist, can point to the Falcons ranking seventh in the NFL in total yardage. To borrow a pithy phrase from Jim Mora, who also went 11-5 in his first year here, those are “empty yards.”
This team can move but can’t score. The offense has managed 28 touchdowns. The 3-10 Titans, who rank 29th in total offense, have produced 29. Of the Falcons’ 28 TDs, 15 came in the first four games.
Once defensive coordinators saw what Shanahan would do with his new team, they reacted. Shanahan’s counter to the counter has been lost in space. Here’s how we know the Falcons suffer from schematic anemia: They’ve scored four first-half touchdowns over the past nine games. (The offense, which presumably knows what it plans to do, should always have the early edge.) Four touchdowns over 270 first-half minutes isn’t just bad; it’s great-googly-moogly awful.
Even if the offense’s abject failure has more to do with Matt Ryan’s strange and sudden slippage than Shanahan’s lack of coordination, it matters not. The Falcons have far more invested in this quarterback than in any assistant coach. If Ryan isn’t comfortable with this offense, Quinn must find him a new one. (Dirk Koetter’s worked OK, and where is he now? With the Buccaneers, who swept the Falcons with a rookie quarterback.)
If it’s too soon to pass judgment on Quinn, it’s not too soon to say that this job, which seemed a plum over the winter — what first-time head coach wouldn’t lust to work with a proven quarterback and the league’s best receiver? – was vacant for a reason. At nearly every other position, the Falcons had run low on players. That hasn’t changed. And the frightening part is that, the more Quinn’s Falcons play, the less special their biggest talents appear.
Blank is steadfast in his belief that Quinn is the right coach, but the right coach can’t do much if he has the wrong players and the wrong scheme. The owner will make the call on Dimitroff; the decision on Shanahan will fall to Quinn. No head coach wants to fire a guy he just hired, but there’s self-preservation to be considered. If Ryan can’t again play like a franchise quarterback, Quinn won’t be long for this franchise.
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