Quick Slant: Birds of a Feather Establish Together
Falcons @ Eagles, Monday @ 8:15 PM EST
Foundationally, people already lacked confidence in the Falcons after the failed tenure of former HC Arthur Smith. GM Terry Fontenot was on thin ice. “Dime con quién andas y te diré quién eres,” they say in the Spanish-speaking world; “Tell me who you’re with, and I’ll tell you who you are.”
The off-season was all butterflies and rainbows for a while. Atlanta moved on from Smith and hired Raheem Morris, a defensive coordinator with head coaching experience, fruit of the Shanahan/McVay tree. Morris brought in McVay acolyte Zac Robinson to call plays. If fellow McVay disciple Bobby Slowik is “PFF Bobby,” Robinson would be “PFF Zac,” as he worked there from 2017 to 2018 as a senior quarterback analyst. His penchant for analytics and association with McVay had people excited. After all, it's been all right for Slowik. Next, the Falcons spent on the biggest fish in the free agent pond – Kirk Cousins, which was significant since many thought the Falcons were only a QB away from meaningful post-season play.
And as they hit their stride, next came a truly record-stopping moment – I don’t want to be hyperbolic, but maybe one of the wildest left turns in the history of the NFL Draft: the Falcons, who had just doled out $100 million in guaranteed money to a QB, took another at No. 8 overall – Michael Penix, Jr. from Washington, choosing him over the more heralded J.J. McCarthy. Many questioned the sequence of events; did the Falcons sign up for a QB controversy and team turmoil? If so, Cousins’s Week 1 performance probably didn’t help.
As for Philly, after a narrow Super Bowl loss to the Chiefs in the 2022 season, the Eagles jumped to a league-leading 10-1 record in 2023. It may not have been easy to believe from this inflection point, but HC Nick Sirianni narrowly slipped past the ax this off-season, sacrificing assistants and promising to do better to keep his head. The reason? Philly dropped six of their last seven, including consecutive embarrassments to the bottom-dwelling Cardinals and Giants to lose the division title and a barely-there appearance in the Wild Card game against the Buccaneers, whose admission to the playoffs was a technicality owed for winning the worst division in football.
The Eagles’ collapse was one of the worst in NFL history. Then again, the Falcons know a thing or two about the subject.
