The Falcoholic
Chances are Arthur Blank will not fire Raheem Morris and Terry Fontenot during the season. It is not his style, after all, as the only time the Falcons’ owner has done so was during 2020 after he took a big risk in keeping Dan Quinn and Thomas Dimitroff around and watched them go 0-5 to open the season. That’s especially true because he generally doesn’t fire any coach before three seasons have passed, and not even letting Morris finish out his second would likely seem desperate and out of character to Blank himself.
But it also doesn’t feel impossible. Arthur Smith was hired to oversee a rebuild-the-team-wouldn’t-call-a-rebuild and went 14-20 his first two seasons; Morris is currently sitting at 12-18 with what was supposed to be a much better roster. Fontenot has been in charge of building that roster for five years now and has exactly zero winning seasons and an overall record of 33-48 to show for it, plus no first round pick to work with next year. Fan apathy is cresting, national respect has entirely cratered, and the sense that this team will somehow figure this out has evaporated like a puddle in a salt pan. Things are bad even by the standards of the Atlanta Falcons, and this has not escaped Arthur Blank’s notice.
If the solution he hits on involves jettisoning the team’s current brain trust, likely with Jeff Ulbrich taking on interim duties, so that he can hire a brand new general manager and head coach and get a jump on the search, Blank will likely do it after this upcoming game. The reason for that is simple enough: The Falcons can’t realistically expect to fire Morris and have it land well with the team with a game just a few days away. Firing him after the Thursday night game, however, would the interim staff a week-and-a-half to get ready for the final three games of the season. With the season well and truly over, and frustration even higher if the Falcons lose to the Bucs, it would give the interim (again, likely Ulbrich) a chance to make his case while still putting Atlanta a little bit ahead on bringing in their next hire.
Again, I’ll stress that this isn’t likely, and the lack of a move following the Bucs game does not mean Morris and Fontenot are safe. The surest sign that Morris might survive the season would be the team deciding to dismiss one of or both of their struggling coordinators, offensive coordinator Zac Robinson and special teams coordinator Marquice Williams, to see what their respective units looked like without them over the final three games. That would indicate that Blank was considering keeping Morris and viewed his hires as a bigger problem; as our own Tre’Shon Diaz has said repeatedly this year, that still wouldn’t reflect well on Morris given that he made those hires in the first place.
But we don’t really have any clues as to what the Falcons will...
