A third straight losing season is not what anyone had in mind for the Atlanta Falcons.
After the Atlanta Falcons loss to the New Orleans Saints on Sunday, the team falls to a 4-8 record and will not have a winning season for the third consecutive year.
The Falcons made a lot of bad moves to cause this but there are several that stood out.
Devonta Freeman Extension
The first mistake that started the downfall of the Atlanta Falcons was giving Devonta Freeman a contract extension making him the highest-paid running back in the NFL at the time.
The majority of analytics Twitter does not believe in paying running backs and the Atlanta Falcons made a terrible decision re-signing Freeman.
Devonta Freeman was a product of Kyle Shanahan’s scheme and produced nothing when he received his extension. Freeman only produced two 1,000-yard seasons in his career during the 2015 and 2016 seasons.
Shanahan was the offensive coordinator during those seasons and was able to make Devonta Freeman look better than he was.
Since his extension, Freeman has played 35 games in five seasons. He has not been able to stay healthy or productive. While many players and fans liked Freeman extending him was the wrong decision.
Instead, the Atlanta Falcons should have gone with Tevin Coleman and acquire draft capital during the 2017 offseason.
Many plays went wrong for the Atlanta Falcons during Super Bowl 51 but Freeman not blocking Dont’a Hightower was one of the biggest mental errors in sports history.
The Atlanta Falcons started getting in a cap situation after signing him. By making him the highest-paid running back they did not have the money to improve their offensive and defensive lines which have struggled heavily since his extension.
Giving Devonta Freeman the extension was the first domino to fall for the Atlanta Falcons. They make worse moves, but this is one that started the chain reaction.
Inability to evaluate offensive coordinator
The next move that caused the downfall of the Atlanta Falcons was the front office’s inability to evaluate the offensive coordinator.
Kyle Shanahan was a fantastic offensive coordinator for the Atlanta Falcons and perhaps the best in franchise history. Replacing him was going to be a difficult task but the Atlanta Falcons still needed to find someone to take control of the number one offense in 2016.
They decided to hire Steve Sarkisian from Alabama who was a bad offensive coordinator in 2017 but was much better in 2018. Nowadays he is doing fantastic at Alabama and is on the shortlist for many schools who are looking for a new head coach.
The mistake the Atlanta Falcons made was not promoting quarterbacks coach Matt LaFleur to offensive coordinator in 2017. After Shanahan left LaFleur went to the Rams and helped Sean McVay call plays for them. He then became the Titans offensive coordinator in 2018 and became the Green Bay Packers head coach in 2019.
In his first season, LaFleur led the Packers to a 13-3 record with an NFC Championship game appearance and currently has a 9-3 record this season.
One of the biggest reasons why the Atlanta Falcons did not make LaFleur the offensive coordinator is that they thought he was not ready to be an offensive coordinator. The Atlanta Falcons were wrong in a major way.
Instead, they had to settle for Steve Sarkisian, and then in 2018 when Dan Quinn and Thomas Dimitroff were the problems, they made Sarkisian the scapegoat and fired Dirk Koetter.
Dirk Koetter is train-wreck level bad as an offensive coordinator. His scheme is outdated and predictable for NFL defenses. The past two seasons have been rough for Matt Ryan and Julio Jones and they wasted the past two seasons with Koetter.
Koetter underperformed during the 2012-2014 seasons and it was a big mystery why the Atlanta Falcons brought him back after failing with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The Atlanta Falcons offense would have produced better results if Steve Sarkisian was the offensive coordinator in 2019 and 2020.
The inability to evaluate the offensive coordinator is perhaps the main cause of the Atlanta Falcons’ downfall.
The entire 2017 NFL Draft
The 2017 NFL Draft was a disaster for the Atlanta Falcons and a big reason why they are not having a good 2020 season. The NFL Draft is meant for teams to build in the future. When a draft class is on the last year of their rookie contracts, it can often dictate how the season will go.
Unfortunately for the Atlanta Falcons the 2017 draft class was terrible. The picks themselves were not great but the biggest miss was who they could have potentially gotten.
The Atlanta Falcons taking Takkarist McKinely over TJ Watt will forever be one of the biggest misses for Falcons. The Atlanta Falcons traded up to select Takkarist McKinley instead of selecting TJ Watt or Tre’Davious White.
Either one of those players would have given the Atlanta Falcons a much better boost to their defense. The Atlanta Falcons pass rush or secondary would not need as much work if they drafted either one of those players. Instead, the Atlanta Falcons have a lot of work to do in both areas.
The only draft pick they hit on was Demontae Kazee. The other draft picks were terrible, and they could have gotten better players with those picks. The worst part about the 2017 NFL draft was they drafted the right positions just not the right players.
The Atlanta Falcons drafted Duke Riley over Alex Anzalone, Eric Saubert over George Kittle, and Brian Hill over Aaron Jones.
Had the Atlanta Falcons made that draft class we would be talking about them winning a Super Bowl at some point the last three seasons.
Picking Up Vic Beasley’s fifth-year option
Another move that caused the downfall of the Atlanta Falcons was picking up Vic Beasley’s fifth-year option at the end of the 2018 season.
Vic Beasley was sadly a one-hit-wonder for the Atlanta Falcons. Beasley had the most sacks in the NFL during the 2016 NFL season but did not have much production after that season.
Coming out of Clemson, Beasley looked like a premier pass rusher for the Atlanta Falcons and would finally be the guy to fix the pass rush. Sadly, he never panned out because of Dan Quinn.
Quinn decided to put Beasley at both linebacker and defensive end during the 2017 season. This mistake stunted his development and Beasley was not able to get past it even after getting moved back to the defensive line in 2018.
The Atlanta Falcons were put in a tough spot when his rookie contract was up and needed to decide regarding his future. They decided to pick up his fifth-year option which put the Atlanta Falcons in a bad cap situation, and they were unable to add any more players in the offseason.
This moved proved Dan Quinn and Thomas Dimitroff were in over their head and it was only a matter of time before everything else started to crumble. Fans want to see their coach and general manager have faith in their guys but when they are wrong it is costly to the organization.
Not trading away players when they had value.
The last action that caused the Atlanta Falcons downfall was not trading away players. The Atlanta Falcons had the chance to receive a bunch of draft capital, but Thomas Dimitroff and Dan Quinn decided not to trade anyone away to keep their jobs.
Obviously, that plan did not work Thomas Dimitroff and Dan Quinn were fired and the Atlanta Falcons did not receive any draft capital.
The players the Atlanta Falcons should have traded around the 2018/2019 trade deadlines are Vic Beasley, Takkarist McKinley, Devonta Freeman, and Austin Hooper.
Beasley should have been traded at the 2018 trade deadline as there were reports the Falcons would receive a second-round pick. Instead, the Atlanta Falcons tried to trade him at the 2019 trade deadline and could not even receive a sixth or seventh-round pick.
At the 2019 trade deadline, there were reports teams were heavily interested in Austin Hooper and Devonta Freeman. Reports claimed teams were offering a second-round pick for Hooper and a fourth-round pick for Freeman.
Neither one of those players are on the roster and 2020 and the Falcons let them go receiving nothing in return.
The last player the Atlanta Falcons failed to trade away is Takkarist McKinley. Takk even tweeted his frustration about them not trading him and was later cut. Reports claimed there were second-round offers for Takk around the 2019 trade deadline.
Takk has not produced a quality season and Dimitroff should have been fired right then and there not taking that deal. Rich McKay also showed why he needs to be fired not trading away Takk when he did not want to be there.
With the draft capital, the Atlanta Falcons could have received they would be in a much better position going into the 2020 and 2021 NFL seasons.