Falcons: TD was the happiest kid on earth after that FG!

[juraitwaluzka]

(01-15-2013 06:42 PM)Aftermath Wrote:  Sound like Guido with the whole "zero chance" schtick though. Wouldn't have been surprised at all if Smith got fired for losing a game after having a 20 point lead in the 4th quarter. Now we will never know one way or another.

It's not a schtick. It's listening to what Arthur Blank has said, observing how he has run his businesses, and using your brain and a little common sense.

Blank has talked time and time again about the importance of consistency with respect to the coaching staff. He references teams like Pittsburgh and New England. He's not going to make a reactionary decision and blow things up over one game, playoff or not.

He's also very aware of the team's history. I've heard him directly reference the poor choice that was made the last time this franchise thought they had plateaued and fired a winning coach. In case you weren't around back then, the Falcons had made the playoffs in 3 of the previous 5 seasons (78, 80, 82), then after losing in the playoffs in 1982 the owners fired Leeman Bennet, the winningest coach at the time and the only coach to have ever taken the team to the playoffs. They said the team had plateaued.

Well, the plateau looked nice in comparison to the cliff that Dan Henning and the second stint of Marion Campell drove us off of. It took damn near a decade before the Falcons saw a winning season or the playoffs. It was without question the darkest era in Falcons history. You replace a coach that was making the playoffs 60% of the time with some that made the playoffs 0% of the time. All because they were impatient and drooled all over the Redskins offensive coordinator.

Absolutely nobody was getting fired if we lost yesterday. Sure, you can say technically that no one knows for sure, but that's just as dumb as the people who were saying that Mike Smith called an onside kick, which in the same sense is technically possible, yet supremely imbecilic.

Blank was not going to forget to take his lithium and do a complete personality 180. It would also make him one of the most insincere and full of shit people out there to go against everything he has publicly preached so many times. And if you have ever had the honor to personally speak with the man you know he is one of the most sincere and genuine people there is. He is also one of the most successful. The path to success is not to fire a coach that is making the playoffs 80% of the time and has never had a losing season.

So, you can look at the evidence and come to the only possible reasonable conclusion or you can get it backwards - the argument that someone was going to get fired is _exactly_ like some of the ridiculous conspiracy stuff that Guido was spewing for a while there.

Quote: If I'm Arthur Blank and my HC goes 0-4 and gets flat out embarrassed in the last 3 I'm going to have to consider whether or not my HC has what it takes to get it done

And this is exactly why he's the billionaire franchise owner and you're not. If he thought like that he would have never gotten to where he is.