Potential head coaches that the Atlanta Falcons should avoid

With Dan Quinn’s firing looming, the next question will be who will Arthur Blank bring into the Atlanta Falcons organization to get this team back to an upward trajectory.

The next head coach that Arthur Blank and the Atlanta Falcons target is pivotal for this current generation of Falcons players. Under Blank, the Atlanta Falcons have had three head coaches, all of whom were defensive specialists.

This must change for the 2020 Atlanta Falcons and onward. We cannot waste another season of aging talent on this squad by hiring another defensive head ll coach. Get Matt Ryan his offensive guy.

Nonetheless, while there are a lot of great potential candidates that have the potential to revitalize this Atlanta Falcons team, there are also some candidates that shouldn’t be considered at all.

Anything other than an offensive guy and you might as well bid farewell to any possibility of a Super Bowl appearance.

Raheem Morris

It is pretty understandable to entertain the idea that Arthur Blank will give Morris the opportunity to be hired as the next head coach. Morris has been with the Falcons since 2015 at numerous position specialties.

There is even a possibility that if Dan Quinn is to be fired during the season, Morris would step in as interim. However, the Atlanta Falcons should do nothing more than consider him going forward. No one within the current organization should be considered as a future head coach.

Morris’s only head coaching experience went horribly wrong. From 2009-2011, Morris’s head coached the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to a career record of 17-31. Atlanta does not need that. There is no doubt he should get another chance to be an NFL head coach, but the Falcons need to go someone with a history on offense and Raheem is a defensive coach.

The offense under Morris would look horrible. The Tampa offense never peaked higher than 19th and went as low as 28th.

As a defensive guy, you would expect his defense to be decently ranked. Nope. Tampa’s defense never peaked past 17 and went to as low as 30th. This is unacceptable and Blank should not make this mistake.

Ron Rivera

Freshly fired from the Carolina Panthers, Rivera will be one of the hottest coaches on the market, and rightfully so. Rivera has had a solid system on defense and maintained a decently average defense over his time in Carolina.

Maybe his success with his defense can prompt him to be hired as a defensive coordinator. However, with how recently he was fired, he may be brought on elsewhere as a head coach and won’t be around for the next Atlanta Falcons head coach to consider him as a defensive coordinator.

Side note, Dan Quinn is one of the favorites to replace Rivera while still having his head job in Atlanta.

Greg Roman

Yes, What Roman is doing in Baltimore is nothing short of tremendous. Roman has Lamar Jackson on pace to set quarterback records that will be hard to surpass in years to come.

However, it is foolish to believe his success in Baltimore will transition in Atlanta. The Atlanta Falcons don’t have enough key players on offense that will transition well to the offense he wants to run.

Roman had tremendous success in San Francisco with Colin Kaepernick and is largely considered the reason Kaepernick was as successful as he was from 2012-2014.

His experience in Buffalo with Tyrod Taylor in addition to his time in San Francisco and now Baltimore should suggest he needs a running quarterback to fully grasp what he wants to run on offense.

Roman will be stuck with Matt Ryan for the better part of five to seven years and it is too big of a risk to bring in a coach who wants to run but has an offense with a pocket passer.

His lone season with Joe Flacco starting at quarterback saw Flacco pass for barely over 3,000 yards, the lowest amount of yards while starting in 16 games that season.

Marvin Lewis

A year removed from being fired from the Cincinnati Bengals and we could see Lewis’s name being thrown around as a potential candidate.

The Atlanta Falcons and Arthur Blank need to stay as far away from Marvin Lewis as possible.

On top of being too old, Lewis endured a horrible career in Cincinnati.

As head coach of the Cincinnati Bengals for 16 years, you would assume he would be the right man for the job due to his longevity at his previous team.

That is far from the case.

It is actually a huge mystery how Lewis survived in Cincinnati for 10 years alone. Three winning seasons in his first 10 years. It’s impractical to believe he was kept in Cincinnati because he was the right man.

During his time with Cincinnati, Lewis had a total of six winning seasons, That’s one less the amount of winning seasons the Atlanta Falcons endured with three more head coaches to show for it.

Brining Lewis into Atlanta will either regress us even further or keep us the same as to where we are now. The Atlanta Falcons need to traject upward, not downward.