The Falcoholic
And the grades are not nearly as bad as I expected!
Earlier this week, we asked y’all to grade Jeff Ulbrich’s return to Atlanta as the team’s new defensive coordinator. We shared our thoughts in this staff roundtable, but we wanted to know your perspective.
And the results surprised me a little, because fans by and large do not hate this hire.
A whopping 70 percent of fans who responded give the hire a C or higher letter grade. Here’s the reasoning behind some of these survey responses:
A point that many people made is that it’s very difficult to grade a hire without seeing one second of their performance in this specific role. The Falcons are currently over $7m over the cap and are already going to need to be creative to make the salary cap situation work through free agency and the draft. It’ll make it more difficult to bring in the talent Ulbrich needs to shore up the defense and ensure improved play.
But Ulbrich does return with more experience, including play-calling experience with the Jets. And he was solid in his previous stint with Atlanta. I think it’s reasonable to temper our expectations, and it’s ok to be suspicious about the buddy-buddy nature of the hire, but the possibility definitely exists that Ulbrich is the right guy for the job. Here’s hoping that’s the case.
