Atlanta Falcons: The Best Staff Change is Not What You May Think it is

The Atlanta Falcons made a few coaching changes over the past two weeks, most notably firing Steve Sarkisian and Marquand Manuel and the hiring of Dirk Koetter to be the offensive coordinator and Mike Mularkey to be the tight ends coach. There was one significant coaching change that can propel this team even further.

Kyle Flood, who was the Assistant offensive line coach , is now senior assistant and will be in charge of clock/game management.  That is the most key staff change of this offseason thus far, because I do not have to remind Atlanta Falcons fans of the countless times that Dan Quinn should have called a timeout, or when he did call time-out in the most random situations.

In other words, Dan Quinn realized that clock management isn’t his strong suit and he needs additional assistance during games.  Now someone who isn’t worrying about calling plays, the type of personnel that is on the field, etc, can manage the clock, which is genius.

I’ve thought about this a plethora of times before and I am not exactly sure why more teams don’t do this.  It takes stress off your head coach, it allows for two people to technically manage the clock (the Head Coach and Senior Assistant), and it allows for much better decision-making when it comes to this sort of thing.

Yeah sure, it does mean that you have to adjust some things among the coaches and communication has to be top-notch all game long, but I don’t see why communication wouldn’t be amazing all game long, even if a team didn’t have a Senior Assistant.  It just makes a lot of sense to have this assistant on the sideline.

I also wouldn’t be surprised if we see a trickle down effect across the league with more teams doing this.  Again, I’m not sure why more teams don’t do this because I personally think it is genius.

Though, I guess the Head Coach loses some dignity since he can’t manage the little things like the clock, replays, etc. but if a Head Coach is struggling to remember that stuff, then he might as well get someone to help him out.  Better safe than sorry.

Now I can finally see some better clock management in the future, Atlanta.  Let’s just hope it works out as planned.