If you ask Falcons fans, Arthur Smith has coached his last game as the head coach in Atlanta. However, they don’t make the decisions because he may have been gone weeks ago if that were the case.
After a crushing defeat last week against the Buccaneers, the Falcons still controlled their own playoff destiny, but a 9-7 defeat to the lousy Panthers has really put a possible postseason berth to bed.
It’s the type of loss that causes heads to roll, but if you ask Falcons players, Arthur Smith deserves the job still.
“I think Art is a phenomenal coach,” Calais Campbell said.
Nobody has more cache than the 37-year-old veteran, and Campbell’s message didn’t stop there. The 16-year veteran went further to praise his head coach.
“He’s about getting better, improving, just work the situations, work the craft and I think motivating, getting guys to play hard for him,” Campbell said. “I’m a big fan of him as the coach.”
Smith might be a great guy, but this is a results-oriented business, and the Falcons are staring down the barrel of another top 10 draft pick. Somehow, that hasn’t changed the perception of Smith in the locker room. There’s no boohooing among Falcons players; they’re still somehow focused on the task at hand.
“I’ve seen the work that guys have been putting in and I see how dominant we are in stretches in the game,” Kaden Ellis said. “Why there are the lapses, we’re going to continue to find that out and, at the end of the day, what we need to do is go out and get this next win.” Jake Matthews added that Smith is “a tremendous leader.”
And if you ask the man himself, Arthur Smith is still beaming with confidence that he’s the right guy for the job.
“I think in any job you take, you’ve got to have self-belief. There’s a cycle of it. There are consequences when you lose. There are natural questions. NFL 101. Job is to win games. There’s a lot of things….every situation is different…There are a lot of things we’ve dealt with early on. But ultimately, the job is to win games and get into the playoffs. We’ll still have that opportunity. It looks like a longshot, but each one of these years have been different. We’ve had three different teams. Different movement at some critical spots. At the end of the day, your job is to win. But I’ve got a ton of self-belief. Nobody should take a job that they don’t have belief in themselves, I can promise you that.”
However, an interesting note of yesterday’s press conference is the Falcons’ owner’s response. Blank attended Smith’s session, which is normal, but what isn’t came after.
Ken Sugiura of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution asked Blank if he had a minute to answer some questions, which I assume revolved around the head coach’s job security. According to Sugiura, Blank declined, saying “This is not a good time (to talk).”
The Falcons owner could’ve very easily put his confidence behind Smith publicly, but he didn’t. Reports pertaining to his job security surfaced last week that it would take a “late-season collapse” for Smith to be fired.
Some would characterize a humiliating loss to the 1-12 Panthers as a collapse for the Falcons head coach. We’ll soon find out.
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Photographer: David J. Griffin/Icon Sportswire
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