B.S. Report: Bill Shanks examines Falcons firings, leadership reset

Bill Shanks says the Falcons are reshaping their leadership structure after a consulting review.

A couple of months ago, Falcons owner Arthur Blank employed a consulting firm to come in and give an honest opinion about the Atlanta Falcons. Now, a lot of people will say, well, why did he do that? Well, that allows Arthur Blank to take the personal side out of it. We all know that he like Reggie Morris and Terry Font know, but for a consulting firm to come in and be honest. Well, that’s what you hire him for. But you don’t hire a consulting firm unless you’re not doing a very good job. Over the course of the months that the consulting firm was watching this franchise. They saw a team lose games that they really should not have lost to the Dolphins, the Jets, the Colts and getting blown out by the Seahawks.

And of course, looking back on week one when they lost the game on a missed field goal by their kicker, who shouldn’t have been on the roster anyway. So there were a lot of problems for this team, and mainly they were getting out coached. And Raheem Morris proved once again that he’s not an NFL head coach. Maybe he’s a good coach, but he’s 20 games under 500 as a head coach and he’s just not very good. Terry Fontenot had a great 2025 draft. There’s no question about that. With Jaylen Walker and James Pierce and Xavier Watts, three people who are going to be in the rookie of the year voting. They’re so good. But over the five years he was the general manager, the team had a losing record. So you had to get rid of him too.

They did on Sunday night firing both Morris and Von no. And then on Monday morning, the big news, Rich McKay, who has been involved as an executive in this organization for 22 of the 23 years that Arthur Blank has been the owner, gone, moved over to a different part of Arthur Blank’s business interests and will no longer have any role with the Atlanta Falcons whatsoever.

Now they’re going to hire a president of football, someone who will be in charge, who will then hire a general manager, who will then hire a head coach. And the president of football will be the main football authority. Now, it remains to be seen whether or not Arthur Blank will still have his fingers in the air, but evidently he’s trying to set up something that will kill the collaborative approach that has been in place for the last decade.

And that’s probably at the front of the list of what that consulting firm told him. It hasn’t worked. Two years ago, I heard Arthur Blank in a press conference really defend that collaborative approach and say, this was the way that the NFL is going with a collaborative approach, but there’s never one person in charge. You’ve got to have one person that can have accountability and say, yes, I made that move.

We don’t know who wanted Kirk Cousins or who wanted to draft Michael Penix, or who wanted to draft Kyle Pitts in the weak first year of Terry Fontana’s tenure. We do. We don’t know, because there were too many cooks in the kitchen. Well, now Arthur Blank has fixed that. He has gotten Rich McKay out of the way, which was sorely needed.
Fired a head coach he never should have hired to begin with and gotten a manager out that, unfortunately, was too little, too late with his good drafts. So we’ll have to see what happens. Matt Ryan could be the selection for president of football.

We’ll see if that is the plan or if it’s someone else. But at least the Falcons did what they had to do to start this off.