Atlanta Falcons have to be serious with their New Year Resolution

It’s that time of year where everyone has New Year resolutions and the Atlanta Falcons as an organization is no different.

The Atlanta Falcons have announced several changes for the 2020 season and none of them were changes that most thoughts were going to be made by the franchise. These changes are where the Falcons are starting their New Year resolutions.

The most popular New Year resolution is to get healthier, lose some of the fat in our lives. That could be the actual additional weight that we carry or that could mean trimming the fat from the excess people in our lives.

The latter seems to be what the Atlanta Falcons have done.

By email to their media partners, the Atlanta Falcons announced that defensive passing-game coordinator and secondary coach Jerome Henderson along with assistant defensive line coach Travis Jones are “departing the organization to pursue new career opportunities.

It seems like the Falcons have identified Henderson and Jones as the scapegoats for a season that went completely the opposite direction that anyone within the organization expected it to. The trimming of the fat from a coaching staff perspective.

Will these changes have any effect on the 2020 season, no more than the changes that Dan Quinn made coming out of the bye-week.

The Atlanta Falcons also announced that Dirk Koetter will officially stay on as the offensive coordinator, Raheem Morris will officially be the defensive coordinator and that Jeff Ulbrich will be the assistant head coach.

The Atlanta Falcons keeping Dirk Koetter is the equivalent to giving up on your weight loss goals on January 15th.  You were seemingly never serious about getting into better shape for the new year otherwise you would have given it more time to see actual results.

Keeping Dirk Koetter is the part that forces most to think that the Atlanta Falcons simply are not serious about winning. Sure, year two under a coordinator has gone well during Matt Ryan’s career in Atlanta. In prior cases that have stemmed from a better familiarity with the offense and the weapons.

Koetter was supposed to be different. He had a familiarity with Matt Ryan and Julio Jones. However, in a league where creativity can be the difference between 10-6 or 7-9, the Falcons have kept a one-hit-wonder instead of looking for Mozart.

No one is saying that the Atlanta Falcons cannot be successful in 2020, but what we do know about the NFL is there is no correlation of success between two seasons. Ending the 2019 season 6-2 with two great wins against the best two teams in the NFC does not mean the Falcons will have similar success in 2020 or be able to build on it.

The Atlanta Falcons should be looking at every possible change and upgrade to make sure that in 2020 they are as successful with their New Year resolution as they possibly can be.