Falcons Won’t Fire HC Dan Quinn During Bye Week

Mike Garafolo of NFL Media reports that the Falcons will not fire HC Dan Quinn during the bye week, despite the team’s struggles this season.

Falcons owner Arthur Blank told reporters after last week’s loss that he is “extraordinarily disappointed” in how this season gone for them and he plans to take the “next couple of weeks” to evaluate Quinn’s status with the team.

“I think it’s a fair question. Much like the coach just said, I’m extraordinarily disappointed in the season,” Blank said, via NFL.com. “Nobody would have anticipated 1-7 and the lack of consistency. Today was a prime example of that, down 24-0. If we could just play the second half, we would have won the game; but it doesn’t work that way. We’ll take the next couple of weeks during this bye period of time and evaluate where we are.

“Whatever decision we have to make will be made for the right reasons for the long term. We certainly have a lot of intelligence on this coaching staff here. We have three other head coaches, we’ve got three general managers in this building beyond Thomas [Dimitroff], actually four, including Rich McKay. The knowledge base is there, but the performance is not. And this is a performance-driven business, I understand that and they understand that as well. So, we’ll continue to look at everything we can and make the right decisions that we’re going to have to make. I’m not bashful about making those decisions.

“Well, we are going to do something. We’re going to continue to think really hard and evaluate everything that we can do as an owner and as a senior management team, and figure out if there’s anything that we can do to make some decisions, any earlier, any later, that would help the process, but we have no plans on making any changes right now.”

A few weeks ago, Ian Rapoport reported that Blank was looking for positive changes ahead of the team’s Week 9 bye before shaking things up. Blank traditionally prefers not to make midseason coaching changes, waiting until the end of the season to make a proper evaluation. 

However, the Falcons defense has struggled immensely during the team’s 1-7 start to the season. Quinn took over the defensive playcalling last season after Atlanta’s defense also struggled, but so far it has not improved. 

Quinn, 49, got his start in the NFL in 2001 with the 49ers as a defensive quality control coach before being promoted to defensive line coach. He spent time with the Dolphins, Jets and Seahawks in the same position before being promoted to defensive coordinator in Seattle in 2013. 

Quinn was hired by the Falcons as their head coach in 2015. He helped guide the team to a Super Bowl appearance in his second year in 2016 and has a career record of 37-35 (51.4 percent). 

We’ll have more regarding Quinn as the news is available.