With another win over an elite NFC team, has Dan Quinn done enough in the second half of the 2019 NFL season to save his job with the Atlanta Falcons?
The Atlanta Falcons were a dead football team heading into their annual bye. Atlanta was a horrendous 1-7 on the year and had lost six in a row to completely fall out of the playoff picture in the NFC. Head coach Dan Quinn’s seat could not have been hotter. There was no way he was going to coach this team heading into 2020, but that may have changed in the last several weeks.
Falcons owner Arthur Blank is a model of consistency and does not fire head coaches mid-season. He always gives his coaches time to get it right, and we may have seen that out of Quinn in the second half of 2019.
Since returning from the bye in on Nov. 10, Atlanta has gone 4-2, including three wins over divisional rivals, beating the New Orleans Saints in the Big Easy and completing a season sweep of the Carolina Panthers. Their two losses since the bye are to the Saints in a rematch and their first meeting with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers this season. Atlanta has a chance to avenge this.
Many thought Atlanta beating New Orleans on the road was a fluke, but the Falcons defeating yet another NFC contender in the San Francisco 49ers on the road this week means it’s a trend. With games against the Jacksonville Jaguars and the Buccaneers remaining, Atlanta has a decent shot to finish the year at 7-9. How is this even possible at this point?
Well, Atlanta made a huge decision heading into its annual bye week. Quinn, who had assumed defensive play-calling duties after his protegé Marquand Manuel was fired after last season, relinquished those responsibilities to linebackers coach Jeff Ulbrich and assistant head coach Raheem Morris. Ulbrich handles first and second-down defense, with Morris handling third down.
This change has worked wonders, as the Falcons have a pass rush and a knack for making explosive plays on defense. One would think if they made these moves in October vs. November that Atlanta might be vying for an NFC Wild Card spot. All the while, the offense has played up to its normal standard, albeit with a new play-caller in offensive coordinator Dirk Koetter.
It’s a little strange, but this team is eerily similar to the 1997 Falcons. Dan Reeves’ 1997 team also started the year 1-7 and caught fire after their bye finishing the year on a 7-4 run after an 0-5 start. That team finished 7-9 and then went 14-2 the following season en route to the Super Bowl. Grady Jarrett’s father Jessie Tuggle was the star of that Atlanta defense. What’s going on?
Okay, let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. That was Reeves’ first year as the Falcons’ head coach and he had achieved a ton of success previously with the Denver Broncos. This is Quinn’s fifth year in Flowery Branch, but he may have done just enough for it to not be his last. How can that even be? He was a dead man walking weeks ago!
It’s a tad controversial right now, but there is a pathway for Quinn to be back in Atlanta in 2020. If the Falcons win one of their next two games and finish either 6-10 or 7-9, that might be enough to convince Blank of giving Quinn one more year to prove his worth in this organization. This team has played very hard the last several weeks and hasn’t quit on him just yet, so there’s still hope.
At the end of the day, what this comes down to is if there is a better head-coaching candidate out there than Quinn to replacement him with. Should Atlanta part ways with Quinn, the Falcons will be one of the three best jobs available entering the 2020 NFL offseason. The Falcons would likely go with an offensive-minded guy, as their last two head coaches were defensive-minded ones.
Quinn would not be out of work very long, as he’s a top defensive coordinator candidate, or could get a lower-tier NFL head coaching job right away, depending on the situation. We’ve seen Quinn show a great ability to build a staff and has demonstrated a solid working relationship with general manager Thomas Dimitroff. That Atlanta partnership may continue into the next decade.
So will Blank part ways with Quinn on Black Monday? Right now, it’s not a foregone conclusion that it’s happening anymore. Beating the 49ers might shock the NFL, but not those in Falcons Country. This game was personal because it was against former Falcons offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan’s current team. We knew San Francisco was going to get Atlanta’s best effort.
At this time, it feels still more likely than not that Quinn will get the axe from ownership at the end of the year, given how grossly this team has underachieved the last two seasons. That being said, Quinn has done enough in the second half of the season to at least prove his case to Blank that he’s got this thing figured out finally. It’s just a matter of if Blank believes in him going forward.