FALCONS UPDATE: Falcons head coach Arthur Smith sent a personal request to Falcon managment amid firing threat a

It was hilarious to see heads turn this week about Arthur Smith’s standing as Atlanta Falcons coach. Prior to this weekend, it was stated (as was my impression) that Smith was likely to return, barring a season-ending collapse. Many folks looked up when the Falcons were defeated by the Chicago Bears, wondering if the sky was falling. But now seems like a good time to halt and take a deep breath. To begin, consider how silly it would be to make a decision about whether to remain or fire a head coach based on a two-game sample size that didn’t include a Dolphins-Broncos style point spread (which, even in Week 3, wasn’t typical of either club in 2023). Second, Smith’s development to this point has been substantial when we consider both the parameters under which he joined the job and what he has gotten out of his young core of playmakers despite being visibly hampered at the quarterback position.

Smith was recruited in 2021, the final season of Matt Ryan’s tenure in Atlanta. Ryan was plainly a declining talent who had made his last Pro Bowl appearance five years prior. In almost every season since, Ryan’s adjusted yards gained per pass attempt (a metric meant to create a net average per drop-back that includes losses due to interception) had dropped nearly in half from Atlanta’s infamous Super Bowl run in his MVP season of ’16.

Outside of Kyle Pitts, who had the second-most receiving yards for a tight end in his rookie season, trailing only Mike Ditka, the team relied heavily on aging players like Cordarrelle Patterson, Wayne Gallman, and Mike Davis (Calvin Ridley played just five games that season and stepped away due to mental health concerns, and was later suspended for the entire 2022 season due to gambling). The Falcons took the greatest dead-cap penalty in NFL history when they traded Ryan in Smith’s second season, the year most organizations would try to swing more toward a coach’s personnel inclinations and invest. The dead cap for the Julio Jones deal also tolled, as did the dead cap following Dante Fowler’s release, resulting in more than $60 million in unusable space. With just Pitts and youngsters Tyler Allgeier and Drake London on the roster, Atlanta won seven games with a quarterback combination of Marcus Mariota and Desmond Ridder. The team’s point differential dropped from -146 to -21.

This year has been a letdown, despite the fact that Ridder was the major quarterback option. Even so, the Falcons have a chance to finish the season with a positive point differential, as the team has had six games with more than 400 yards of total offense (including a win over the Saints in which the Falcons missed the mark by four yards). Here are the amount of 400-yard games some of the NFL’s finest offenses have had this season.

• 49ers: 10

• Lions: 7

• Dolphins: 6

• Ravens: 6

• Cowboys: 5

• Eagles: 5

• Bills: 4

• Chiefs: 3

The Falcons are 17th in net yards per passing attempt, trailing only the Packers, Saints, and Jaguars, while having a quarterback who, for the hundredth time, is nowhere near the level of Jordan Love, Derek Carr, or Trevor Lawrence. They outperform the Browns, Seahawks, Broncos, Jaguars, Bengals, Steelers, Saints, and Colts in third-down conversion rate. Smith appears to be getting the ball to his playmakers, as I indicated above with Pitts, who nearly broke the rookie tight end receiving record. Bijan Robinson is on pace to surpass 1,000 yards this season and leads Jahmyr Gibbs for the rookie rushing title.

Here’s how London, a 2022 first-round draft pick, compares to two other Falcons in terms of how many times he’s been targeted and how many times he’s actually possessed the ball in his first two seasons. London has 218 targets and 137 receptions. Jones has 223 targets and 133 receptions. Ridley has 185 targets and 127 receptions. This is a long way of saying, “What else did the Falcons expect?” If the Falcons decide not to give Smith a chance with a real quarterback, it would appear that they are contradicting their initial significant investment in him. Smith signed a six-year contract when he was hired. The length, which was not necessarily comparable to other first-time head coaching hires at the time (following Matt Rhule, owners were temporarily hesitant to offer that long of a contract without a track record of success, though DeMeco Ryans has since elevated that number back up to a standard for high-level first-time candidates), would appear to be an acknowledgement of some difficult times ahead. It says to me, “Develop the core while we wade through the swamp.” The Falcons have a top-10 draft pick (depending on the current order), two third-round picks that may be utilized to move up the board or to pair with a departing veteran such as Justin Fields, and around $40 million in cap space. Smith has brought them to the point where anyone else would consider this a decent job if it become available. So Smith should get first pass at it. Atlanta will finally be able to compete on a reasonable scale next year. Despite some unfavorable conditions, Smith has the team on the verge of contention (the Panthers need to beat the Buccaneers this weekend to have a shot to win the NFC South with a record below.500).