Wednesday, December 12, 2007, 08:31 PM
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank speaks during a news conference Wednesday, Dec. 12, 2007 in Flowery Branch, Ga. to announce assistant coach Emmitt Thomas will serve as interim coach. Bobby Petrino resigned Tuesday.
Flowery Branch — The Falcons are a mess, and they will be for years, probably longer than that. So contrary to what general manager Rich McKay said on Wednesday at a news conference about how he has received some “unique names” among the slew of messages he’s gotten about his vacant head coach’s job, nobody with an accomplished resume is coming here.
Nobody with an accomplished resume should come here, not unless he has absolutely no place to go, especially given the depth of the Falcons’ mess.
This is a self-created mess by Arthur Blank, the owner, and by McKay, that normally invisible general manager who actually surfaced in public for a change. In other words, Bobby Petrino, who created that vacancy at head coach for the Falcons by leaving abruptly on Tuesday to do that “Woo Pig Sooey” thing in Arkansas, is getting too much blame for this franchise threatening to drop off the face of the earth again.
Petrino didn’t hire Petrino.
Blank and McKay did.
All Petrino did was become Petrino, and this is what Petrino does: He lies, and then he leaves. He almost did it when he coached Louisville and tried to sneak into Alabama in the middle of the night to take the job of Auburn coach Tommy Tuberville. Later, Petrino signed a hefty extension with Louisville, supposedly as a sign of his loyalty, but he tried to get the LSU job a few days later. He also swore his allegiance to the University of Louisville, and then to the city, and then to college football two summers ago after he agreed to a 10-year deal worth $25 million. Several months later, he worked in the shadows to get his “dream job” in Atlanta.
Even so, Blank and McKay did a series of foolish things. First, they ignored Petrino’s historically deceitful ways - including the ones that got him to the Falcons - and then they shrugged over the fact that college coaches regularly flunk in the NFL, and then they hired the guy anyway.
Head coach Bobby Petrino of the Atlanta Falcons yells at his players during the preseason game against the Cincinnati Bengals on August 27, 2007 at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta.
That’s why it deserved just a yawn when Blank spent his portion of the news conference speaking of feeling “betrayed” and “let down” after Petrino did what Petrino always does. Blank also said he felt “abused” when he was told by Petrino that “You’ve got a head coach” after a firm handshake only to watch Petrino smile and grin and laugh the next day as the new head coach of the Razorback Nation.
McKay added later that Petrino expressed often during recent days that “He was able to communicate better with college players than pro players.”
Really? I mean, how could Blank and McKay not know as much before they did the ridiculous by giving the guy that five-year contract worth $24 million? The examples were everywhere (Lou Holtz, Steve Spurrier, Butch Davis, Nick Saban, Dennis Erickson) of college coaches who didn’t realize they were dealing with grown men in the NFL. “He couldn’t handle a lot of noise, so he didn’t even want us to speak that loud at team dinners,” said the normally taciturn Warrick Dunn, whose tongue was on automatic on Wednesday while speaking of Petrino. “It was like we were in kindergarten. He didn’t even want us to have the TV on in the locker room, and not even Coach [Bobby] Bowden or Coach [Mark] Richt was like that.”
This was just Petrino being Petrino, which contributed to a vivid microcosm of the Falcons’ mess this week. On Monday morning, the Falcons’ franchise quarterback stood before a federal judge wearing black-and-white prison stripes. On Monday night, they were flattened on national television by their archrivals from New Orleans. The next day, Petrino took a $2 million-a-year pay cut to bolt for a lesser job with three games left during his first season.
In general, the Falcons’ offensive line is abysmal, and their starting quarterbacks are underwhelming. Plus, the rest of their roster isn’t good enough to compensate for all of those other deficiencies along the Falcons’ way to more horrors at 3-10.
If that isn’t enough, the Georgia Dome has become a wonderful place for fans either to boo or to sleep.
There’s good news, though. Said McKay, when asked if he has learned from his mistake of ignoring the obvious when hiring a head coach, “My answer is yes, because we’re sitting up here [during a news conference]. … We learned a lot from it. I’m not sure I’ll sit here and enunciate all of those things.”
Here’s one: Don’t hire a coach who likes to lie and leave.
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