Atlanta Falcons: The two decisions that cost Dan Quinn his job

When looking at Dan Quinn’s career as the Atlanta Falcons head coach, it was an up and down rollercoaster.

Quinn’s first year as the Atlanta Falcons head coach provided a lot of foreshadowing that no one could have seen at the time. The Falcons started out rolling – winning their first five games, only to have that streak broken in the worst way possible, losing to the Saints.

Then they proceeded to win the week after, making fans think the team was still legit. The team sat at six and one on the season but that would go south real quick, losing six straight, and making the possibility of the playoffs a longshot.

After the six-game slide, they rattled off two straight wins and then lost the season closer. Resulting in a .500 season. This meaning that in the final 11 weeks of the season, they went 3-8.

Again the foreshadowing of Quinn’s career as head coach was shown from the very beginning.

Obviously, after that Quinn was able to give the team their second super bowl in franchise history, and few solid seasons.

Dan Quinn’s run as the Atlanta Falcons head coach was ruined from poor decisions in offensive coordinators after Kyle Shanahan left

The hiring of Steve Sarkisian and Dirk Koetter to become the Atlanta Falcons new head coaches was the downfall of Dan Quinn.

Seemingly the decision to make Sarkisian the new offensive coordinator of the Falcons came mostly from Dan Quinn. Quinn knew Sarkisian from his time as the defensive coordinator in Seattle.

For whatever reason Quinn felt it was a better idea to bring in a new face in Sarkisian over hiring either Matt Lafleur or Mike Lafleur, the two guys who helped the team make the super bowl, and who know the team much better than Sarkisian.

Hindsight is always 20/20, but it is worth considering why he did such a thing.

Matt Lafleur is now the head coach of the Green Bay Packers, who have won so many more games than the Atlanta Falcons have in the past couple of years, while Mike Lafleur is the offensive coordinator of the New York Jets as of this year.

Certainly, Sarkisian was been an excellent coordinator for Alabama, but that was a college football. The NFL and college have so many differences that some coaches are not equipped to coach both.

Next came Dirk Koetter, who was even worse than Sarkisian was.

There is not much to say, other than Quinn should have hired Gary Kubiak instead. The thought process of Koetter was probably that he had previously worked with Matt Ryan and they could hit the ground running without having one of those usual adjustment years that most coaches need.

That simply blew up in Dan Quinn and the Atlanta Falcons face. Dirk Koetter simply took one of the most talented offenses in the league and made them look the most inconsistent.

The 2016 Atlanta Falcons rode the high flying offense to the playoffs, and got decent production from the defense in the postseason. Dan Quinn’s decision to hire those two coordinators ultimately ruined numerous years of the franchise and resulted in him not being a head coach anymore.

The decisions to hire those two guys could certainly land on other staff members shoulders as well, like Thomas Dimitroff or Rich McKay, but ultimately Dan Quinn was the head coach and he was the majority of the deciding factor.