The Atlanta Falcons were the first team to pull the trigger on firing their head coach this offseason. Just a few minutes into Black Monday, the Falcons fired Arthur Smith after his third straight 7-10 season as head coach.
The Falcons have gone through a few different regimes over the years but one man remains a constant: CEO Rich McKay.
NFL Insider Jason La Canfora of the Audacy original podcast “In The Huddle” sounded off on McKay’s standing in the Falcons organization.
“Rich McKay’s the biggest part of why. I love this guy’s press conference. He airlifts into these press conferences, sits down up there, tells you how everything’s going to be different and fixed… And does it in a detached manner as if he wasn’t the main guy putting all this together, like he hasn’t been the main guy with the owners here for a generation.
“It cracks me up how these guys can get there and they talk about it in this matter of fact way as if they’ve done all the analysis, done all the reasoning, almost like they’re an outside consultant who’s brought in to tell Arthur Blank what to do next. No, bro! The enemy is within! You’re the problem! You’ve been a part of all these things there that don’t work.”
McKay joined the Falcons organization back in 2003 and was Atlanta’s general manager until 2008. He was then moved to a team president and CEO role from 2008 to 2002, working with owner Arthur Blank and the city to help build Mercedes Benz Stadium. Last year, McKay’s role was changed to just the CEO.
La Canfora questioned if McKay is the “football guy” that he claims to be.
“You’ve got the greatest job in the world. You’re a football guy who fancies yourself a football guy who’s on the competition committee being a football guy who when it suits him, he’s just being a suit, he’s just being a numbers guy. Oh, I’m just the guy that put the stadium together,” he continued. “It must be unbelievable to just depending what serves your purpose of keeping yourself employed and making millions of dollars per year you can just play the shuffle with the public and the media. You ain’t fooling me. You never fooled me.
“Let’s look at the constants for why this franchise has been exactly mediocre save for one moment in time when Kyle Shanahan was running their offense. What are the constants there? Who’s making these decisions? Maybe you don’t know how to evaluate people. Maybe you’re not really a football guy. You’re certainly not the football guy that you pretend to be when you’re in front of the NFL’s media explaining this rule change or that rule change. Maybe you’re not very good at this.
McKay spent nearly a decade with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers as their general manager from 1994 to 2003 before joining the Falcons, but you don’t hear much about that, La Canfora noted.
“It’s amazing. It’s like he was never in Tampa. The whole thing falls apart in Tampa and you don’t hear Rich McKay’s name about it. You hear the owners and you hear Gruden,” he said. “Come on, man! How is this guy so teflon? It blows my mind. To have the balls to sit up there and it’s like ‘This is what didn’t work.’ Bro, you put it together! It’s your thing! You’ve been putting it together for years.
“You kept the Dimitroff thing way too long, much longer than you should’ve. You kept the Mike Smith thing longer than you should’ve. You kept the Dan Quinn thing longer than you should’ve. You kept the Arthur Smith thing – another one that you put together – longer than you should’ve. But you just got a job for life? You can walk in there and sit up there with the owner or whatever and dictate what it is? What’s the accountability there? What would he have to do to get fired at this point? Slap the owner across the face in public? What would it take?”
The Falcons have gone through several coaches and front office personnel since McKay joined the organization yet he hasn’t been held accountable for Atlanta’s poor showings. They’ve made the playoffs seven times since 2003 with a record of 5-7.
There are going to be changes this offseason in Atlanta. We’ll see how McKay and the Falcons handle them.