Bye Bye Mike Mularkey!

Last night came some great news, that pretty much the entire Atlanta Falcons fan base jump for joy. Falcons OC Mike Mularkey was hired by the Jacksonville Jaguars to be their head coach yesterday and vacates the OC position in Atlanta.

While i usually like to keep things consistent and stable, the Falcons needed a change badly on offense and i could of seen Mularkey getting fired regardless of whether he got a new role or not.

Where did Mularkey go wrong? Who can we get to replace him?

Although Mularkey did a nice job the first few years in Atlanta bringing Matt Ryan along using a power run game philosophy he struggled to adapt when the personnel got better and needed a more dynamic and explosive scheme. By all accounts he struggled to put the great talents, that Atlanta have on offense, in the best position to win football games. You don’t have to look far for an example of that, just a few days ago against the Giants, his offense managed to score zero points!

This all with Roddy White, Julio Jones, Harry Douglass, Tony Gonzalez, Michael Turner and Matt Ryan. That’s without including role players Jacquizz Rodgers, Jason Snelling and Kerry Meier (who was never used under Mularkey for some reason). While the offensive line is average, the mass array of weapons should be able to get at least double digit points!

Let’s stop being angry at Mularkey, now that he has gone and take a look at who could come in and get these very good players together to form an elite offense.

The favorite right now for the offensive coordinator position would be current Falcons QB coach Bob Bratkowski. This is a move i would quite like, as he has done a nice job with Ryan this year getting him to have career numbers in passing yards and touchdowns. He also has had previous experience with the Cincinatti Bengals as their OC from 2001 to 2011 and got the best out of players such as Corey Dillon, Carson Palmer, TJ Houshmandzadeh and Chad Ochocinco who have all gone elsewhere and had little success outside of Cincy. Bratkwoski ran a vertical passing game with the Bengals and had some effectiveness when QB Carson Palmer was healthy.

Other potential candidates include Mike Martz (Hell No!) or Dirk Koetter, former Jackonsville OC which makes no sense to me either as he has never created a great offense with the Jags and i think we would just get another Mularkey if we hired Koetter.

Mike Smith’s brother in law Brian Billick would be an intriguing option but i just don’t see him leaving his comfy job on TV. Another name i like the sound of is Packers QB coach Tom Clements, but with his team still in postseason action it will be a while before we get a chance to talk to him.

Who should we go for? Post your thoughts in the comments section below.