In the 20th century, Dan Henning got four years without managing a winning season. (The Falcons wanted to fire him after Year 3 but let Henning talk them out of it.) In this century, Mike Smith posted five consecutive winning seasons — this for a franchise that hadn’t seen even two in a row — but was gone after two losing ones. Things happen faster now.
On Thursday, the Falcons will open their second training camp under Dan Quinn. His first team started 6-1 and finished 8-8. The consensus on the 2016 Falcons is that they’ll be a better team — if they’re not, something’s wrong — with a worse record. That’s owing to the schedule, which is why last year’s collapse was so distressing. They played the NFL’s second-softest schedule. They went 3-3 in games against eventual playoff qualifiers. They missed the playoffs themselves.
This time the Falcons face the NFL’s toughest schedule. (They’re actually in a statistical tie with San Francisco.) They’ll play seven games against teams that made last season’s playoffs. Of their eight road games, only three will be in the Eastern Time Zone. If they were a bad 8-8 last year, this season could yield a not-bad 8-8. But would consecutive break-even years be enough for an impatient owner who has a stadium to open presumably next year?
I liked Quinn as a hire. I like him as a guy. I’m just not sure he was ready to be what Arthur Blank made him, meaning czar of football. I believe Blank’s decision to nudge Thomas Dimitroff aside while keeping him employed has rendered this front office out of plumb.
Say what you will about Dimitroff, but he was once the NFL’s executive of the year. (Granted, that was in 2008, the same year Smith was named the league’s top coach.) Quinn is a second-year head coach whose first season fell apart. The Hawks gave Mike Budenholzer a similar bump, but he was coming off 60 wins and being named the NBA’s coach of the year. Quinn was coming off being Seattle’s defensive coordinator.
The Falcons’ second-biggest outlay for a free agent this offseason was for receiver Mohamed Sanu, a signing panned as a massive overpay. The Falcons’ No. 1 pick was spent on Keanu Neal, a safety not universally viewed as a first-round talent. I’ve defended Quinn’s right to have the players he wants, but what if he’s not the greatest judge? What if the czar needs someone to tell him no?
Case study: Dan Reeves. He took the Falcons to their one-and-still-only Super Bowl, which should have made him coach for life. Alas, he presided over one winning season — one in five — thereafter. A really good coach was less good at judging talent. (See: “Kelly, Reggie.”) Reeves got the most out of what he had but was undone by his personnel choices.
Quinn’s continuing support of Kyle Shanahan is also curious. This coordinator had a 4,500-yard passer, a 1,800-yard receiver and a 1,000-yard rusher, and his offense barely averaged a touchdown per half. Did Quinn hire Shanahan two winters ago because he believes he’s right for this team or because he happened to be available? Is he backing him now because he’s convinced the touchdown issue will be resolved or because he’s unwilling to concede his hire was a misfire?
Here I make a concession: Had last year’s Falcons started 1-6 and finished 8-8, we’d have thought Quinn had figured things out as he went, which would have led us to believe that happier days were nigh. As is, we wonder how a team could go 1-1 against Carolina but 0-4 against New Orleans and Tampa Bay.
As hard as it is to imagine a second non-winning season would impel Blank to dethrone his czar, we go back to our premise: Things happen faster now. On Jan. 20, 2013, Smith’s Falcons led the 49ers 17-0 in the NFC Championship game; on Dec. 29, 2014, he was fired.
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