Dan Quinn lost his job with Falcons’ loss vs. Texans
By John Buhler
At 1-4. Dan Quinn has done enough to lose his job as the head coach of the Atlanta Falcons after falling on the road to the Houston Texans.
Enough is enough. The Atlanta Falcons need to make a change at head coach and need to do it now. 1-4 isn’t even remotely good enough. This is a team that has drafted well for the last few years and has Pro Bowl talent scattered all over the gridiron. Yet, this NFC South franchise continues to get pushed around by any team on Sunday. Dan Quinn’s time in Atlanta has run out.
Atlanta fell yet again on the road, this time to the Houston Texans on Sunday afternoon, 53-32. This was the seventh straight loss to an AFC opponent for the Dirty Birds. If you take it back to Super Bowl LI, Atlanta has gone a horrendous 1-11 against the AFC since falling to the New England Patriots in Houston back in Feb. 2017.
If you take it back to their last two regular-season games against the AFC in 2016, the Falcons somehow found a way to lose at home to the Kansas City Chiefs on a pick-two and before that, they lost at home to the then-San Diego Chargers in what was their last season before moving to Los Angeles. In its last 14 games against the AFC, Atlanta has gone 1-13. We can’t make this up.
So what is the significance of this regarding Quinn’s job security, or lack thereof, with this team? It means one glaring thing: Atlanta is abysmal at putting together a game plan against a team that it doesn’t play regularly. If the Falcons have to create a game plan from scratch, odds are that Quinn and his staff won’t be able to put something together that will work at all. The results talk.
Firing all three coordinators from a season ago did nothing. Atlanta continues to struggle to get after the passer. Yes, Deshaun Watson is incredibly nimble, but the Texans have arguably the worst offensive line in football. Add in that he threw for over 425 yards against this Big 12 secondary and you will understand why the Falcons are so bad under Quinn.
If Falcons owner Arthur Blank realizes that his football team is suffering travesty after travesty thanks in large part to deplorable coaching, there is a decent chance that Quinn has coached his last game for the Falcons.
Should Blank pull the plug on the Quinn experiment, look for offensive coordinator Dirk Koetter to attempt to reclaim this sunken ship the rest of the way. Quinn might be the de facto defensive coordinator, but expect the franchise to MacGyver it for the remainder of 2019. It can’t be as bad as it has been.
If this is the end of the Quinn era in Flowery Branch as we know it, he will have gone 6-14 against the AFC in four years and change. He initially went 5-1 against the other conference, but going on this 1-13 slide is borderline unbelievable. Then again, this is the architect who blew a 28-3 lead with two minutes and change left in Super Bowl LI. Nobody will ever forget that epic collapse.
Quinn’s only home win against the AFC was against the Texans in 2015. It would be only fitting, as his Super Bowl LI dreams died in Houston and so may very well have his Falcons career. The offense scored 32 points on the road and the team still lost. He’s a defense-first coach and whatever he’s done on that side of the ball cannot continue. It’s a brutal watch.
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This may not be the last game that Quinn coaches the Falcons, but this will be the one piece of straw that broke Blank’s bank to have him lose all faith in his head coach. This team, this city and this fanbase deserve so much better than this. Let’s stop wasting time and fix this damn thing.