Falcons Owner Arthur Blank Reveals Biggest Surprise From Consulting Firm Report

ATLANTA – The Atlanta Falcons are in the midst of major structural changes after an eighth straight season of finishing without a winning record and on the outside of the playoffs. After cleaning house last Sunday, Arthur Blank made his first major announcement of the offseason that Matt Ryan is taking over as the new ‘president of football.’

Ahead of those moves on Saturday, the Falcons' owner addressed the several changes that are set to sweep through the organization. After it became apparent that the Falcons were eliminated from playoff contention this season, Blank brought in a third-party firm (Sportsology) to audit his franchise. What he learned from that experience, he said, surprised him.

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“I would say that one of the things that I think that probably was a little bit surprising was the lack of clarity about the vision for the team,” Blank said. “In any business, in any industry, when you don't have clarity around vision about what you’re trying to establish and trying to build, you can end up with a lot of disparate parts, everybody moving in different directions, and that means you're not only unsuccessful or partially unsuccessful, but you can be very inefficient.

“As laser-focused as you can be in terms of exactly what you want to do, you're going to make better selections of players, coaches, and coaching staff, hold that kind of consistency in place, and you modify it over time depending on what's happening in the game. The game is changing. The NFL has definitely moved to a more focus on offense than defense over the years. But, you’ve got, particularly when it comes to playoffs, teams that have really great defenses, do well.”

This lack of ‘clarity’ is what led to the eventual termination of both Raheem Morris and Terry Fontenot. It led to what often felt like muddled or impulsive decision-making that plagued the franchise, leaving them in a perpetual state of mediocrity.

Just look at the quarterback decisions – spanning from the sporadic choice to pursue Deshaun Watson (or not pursue Lamar Jackson), settling on Desmond Ridder in 2023, before signing Kirk Cousins to a lucrative deal and drafting Michael Penix Jr. just a few months later.

Too often, their choices felt hard to explain, and the person who made the decision never felt like it was easy to rationalize, either. Even on Thursday, Blank stopped short of offering up ‘blame’ for who made what decisions, calling those choices “organizational.”

“I think that you want the organization to see the same vision, to buy into it, to support it, to all be in lockstep on those kinds of things,” Blank said. “It doesn't mean you agree on everything. It means you have a healthy debate before you make the decisions, but once you make them, you move forward together in support of those decisions.”

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With the addition of Ryan to the franchise, the hope is that the Falcons may finally have some of that accountability that fans have yearned for. And Blank, who referred to himself as the “custodian of the franchise for the fans,” will look to clean up the franchise that has fallen into a dreadful eight-year skid.

“I think that it's an expression that I often use, that good is the enemy of great,” he said, “I think we're capable of getting to another level. So, that was the reason we made the decision.”

The hope is that these widespread changes will do the trick, but time will tell.