Falcons coach Arthur Blank wasn’t willing to speculate last week about what might happen after the season if the Falcons don’t improve their results and he’s not deviating from that course this week.
He is sending the message that the team’s 2-4 start isn’t acceptable, however. Blank said that he feels the team has enough talent to warrant a better record, which leaves plenty of room for others to speculate about what might lie ahead for coach Mike Smith or General Manager Thomas Dimitroff if this year plays out in a similar fashion to last season.
“We’ve got tremendous talent, really, on both sides of the ball, coaching-wise and player-wise, and to be sitting at 2-4 after six games is very disappointing,” Blank said, via Vaughn McClure of ESPN.com. “It’s disappointing to me. It’s disappointing to our head coach, our general manager, all of our coaches [and] all of our players. And it’s because we know we have a greater capacity than that. If you have no capacity, you’re not disappointed. When you have capacity and you don’t perform, you are. So, we are.”
Blank mentioned the injuries that have left the team without some of their top players, but indicated they weren’t an excuse since the next player on the roster was expected to play at a high level if pressed into action. That hasn’t happened often enough in Atlanta while the ongoing defensive issues that led to roster changes in the offseason haven’t gone away.
If they persist and the Falcons fall short of the postseason again this year, Blank’s words suggest he’d be inclined to find new people to get the team’s capacity in line with its record.