The franchise that fell 10 yards short of the Super Bowl in January 2013 has turned to a coordinator from the team just halted one yard short of consecutive Super Bowl victories. Good thing the Falcons hadn’t pre-anointed Seattle offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell, or Tuesday’s news conference would have included 50 shades of the question: “What were you thinking?”
No, Dan Quinn was the Seahawks’ defensive man, and defense has been the best part of that ferocious team. Quinn arrives drawing the highest of huzzahs from his players, from his boss Pete Carroll and from Jim Mora, the first coach Arthur Blank hired (and the second he fired). Quinn also arrives as the Falcons are being investigated by the NFL for pumping “artificial crowd noise” into the Georgia Dome the past two seasons; in Seattle, there’s enough of the real variety to go around.
It was under Mora, then the 49ers’ defensive coordinator, that Quinn eased into pro football as a quality-control guy. He has since worked under Nick Saban (the badge of honor) and Will Muschamp (less so), though it’s worth noting that the 2012 Florida Gators won 11 games with Quinn’s defense and not much else.
Let’s take it on faith that the Falcons’ defense in 2015 will lose its hard-earned title as the NFL’s lousiest. If you pair a slightly better defense with an offense that features Matt Ryan and Julio Jones, isn’t it possible that a team that won 10 games the past two years might win 10 next season alone?
Yes. It’s possible. But here we need to temper expectations. The Falcons might be better on defense, but the offense could take a hit. Mike Tice, the man who turned this line into something not entirely terrible, was allowed to leave for Oakland. Dirk Koetter, an excellent offensive coordinator, now works for Tampa Bay, and in his stead comes Kyle Shanahan, who didn’t trip the light fantastic with Cleveland. And beyond X’s and O’s, there’s this:
The Falcons are kind of a mess.
They had a chance to win the worst division in the history of sports and lost 34-3 at home to Carolina. Before the game, reports circulated that the Falcons had retained a search firm to help find a coach, although technically they still had one. (Twenty-three hours later, they didn’t.) The next day, Blank presided over a news conference that left general manager Thomas Dimitroff sitting at the head table while reporters asked, “Why didn’t he get fired, too?”
On Jan. 7, the Falcons announced a “restructuring” of their front office in a press release so fuzzy that a team publicist had to call reporters to clarify that Dimitroff would still have final say over personnel. (Although the man who made his reputation as a scout will no longer be scouting.) The final three paragraphs of the nine-paragraph release sang the praises of Scott Pioli, who washed out as Kansas City’s GM but who’s the flavor of the month in Flowery Branch, but tucked in Paragraph No. 4 was this sobering quote from Blank:
“While this decision was not tied to the head coach search currently underway, we also believe that independent thinking and collaboration will contribute to taking us to the next level in our league. Therefore, our new head coach and Thomas will report separately to me.”
Therefore? As in, obviously? Why exactly should Quinn, a career football man, report to Blank, who made his billions peddling ceiling fans? The Falcons claim their restructuring follows the Baltimore model — one GM sees the big picture; an assistant sweats the details — but that bit about the coach reporting to the owner sounds more akin to the Jerry Jones model. At last check, it has been nearly 20 years since Dallas won a Super Bowl.
Credit Blank for bringing a business sense to the Falcons that was absent over their first 3 1/2 decades of operation. But Blank isn’t a football man. Does Robert Kraft have Monday meetings with Bill Belichick to review the previous day’s game? Does Kraft feel the need to sit front-row at Belichick’s media briefings? (If so, Kraft is a masochist of the first rank.) Isn’t the best thing any owner in any sport can do is to hire good people and then go off and own?
Since coming so close to the Super Bowl and missing, the mood around the Falcons has gone from urgency, which is what you’d want from a professional team, to desperation, which manifestly isn’t. Adding to the pressurized mix is Blank’s new stadium, which is scheduled to open in 2017 but for which five-figure personal seat licenses are available as we speak.
Mike Smith inherited a team that had gone 4-12 and would be working with a rookie quarterback. As such, not much was expected overnight. (Say this for Smitty: He went 11-5 out of the box.) Smith’s successor gets a team with a proven quarterback and an antsy owner who has a new stadium to fill. Dan Quinn better win pretty darn quick.
About the Author
