The Atlanta Falcons have wasted two years under Dan Quinn

After the Atlanta Falcons Super Bowl collapse, one thing was clear, a change had to be made. Whenever something of that magnitude happens in sports, you need more than a retool.

The Atlanta Falcons didn’t do that and they have since wasted two years of football. There’s no such thing as loyalty in sports. We see it all the time. When an organization is ready to move on from a player, they cut bait and keep it moving.

Either Arthur Blank or Thomas Dimitroff should’ve done the same with Quinn and other players on the team. After the Super Bowl, all of the sports worlds knew Kyle Shanahan was going to accept a head coaching position elsewhere. That’s just how sports work.

And the Falcons did the novel thing and gave Dan Quinn a chance to get the bad taste out of his mouth but that’s all he deserved. And he’s since gotten much more. Most of the same team came back, Quinn made a questionable call bringing in offensive coordinator Steve Sarkisian, but they returned to the playoffs.

That should’ve been the victory lap. You blew an inexcusable lead, you got up and tried it again, and you came up short. That was the time to move on, but the Atlanta Falcons didn’t.

What they saw in him to be the coach to get this team back to the promised land is mystifying.

The next season was a losing one and now the team is in a tailspin. Quinn should have never been given the opportunity to keep leading this team. In fact, Marquand Manuel with this year’s defense would’ve been the best-case scenario.

Quinn bet on himself, took on too much responsibility and is now too stubborn or prideful to admit it isn’t working. As the team was in the midst of a spiral last year before finishing 7-9, he constantly fed fans horse crap that they believed in the talent in the building.

Week after week it was apparent that talent wasn’t enough. Yet, he made no move to sign Eric Berry or Reid. No move to upgrade at positions that needed help. And again this year, as Gerald McCoy and Ndamukong Suh lingered as free agents, no attempt to sign them. He let Bruce Irvin walk. The team hasn’t recorded a sack in three games.

Dan Quinn came to Atlanta and got lucky. In his first year, the team was average. It wasn’t until Matt Ryan and Shanahan clicked that the team made it to the Super Bowl. In fact, Quinn has had little to do with their success as the defense has been a consistent weak spot on this team.

He should’ve never got three more tries after the Super Bowl and now, Atlanta is paying for it.