A reporter at the NFL's annual league meetings asked Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank about his assessment of the team's 2024 season, prefacing his question with how the year started and how it ended up.
Blank cut him off, jokingly.
"Six and three, two-game lead [in the division] -- I got it," Blank said Tuesday, drawing laughs from the gathered media.
After Week 9, the Falcons had completed a two-game sweep of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, their biggest threat in the NFC South, and were 4-0 in division play. The rest of the way, Atlanta went 2-6, missing the playoffs for the seventh straight season. The Falcons haven't had a winning season since 2017.
Blank's curtness was tongue-in-cheek, but there was no mistaking how he felt about how the Falcons performed down the stretch. The owner said the season was "very disappointing" and he let head coach Raheem Morris and general manager Terry Fontenot know it.
"Raheem certainly understands I was disappointed," Blank said. "Terry certainly understands I was disappointed. And it wasn't a long conversation, but it was a very clear conversation with both of them."
Things went haywire for the Falcons in the middle of the season. Quarterback Kirk Cousins, whom the team signed in the offseason to a $90 million guaranteed contract, struggled during a four-game losing streak, throwing eight interceptions and no touchdown passes during that stretch. That led to 2024 No. 8 overall draft Michael Penix Jr. getting tabbed as starter "moving forward" in Week 16.
Blank is a believer in continuity, especially when it comes to his head coach, general manager and quarterback. The Falcons believe Penix will be in place as the team's franchise QB for a long time. Then, there's Morris and Fontenot. Morris just completed his first season as the full-time head coach of the Falcons. Fontenot is going into his fifth season still looking for his first winning record in Atlanta.
Does that mean Fontenot is on the hot seat in 2025? Blank wouldn't necessarily make that leap.
"Every year for everybody is a crucial year," Blank said. "So, I don't want to say the NFL is 'Not For Long.' I don't believe in that, because I fundamentally do believe -- and I'll make this point really clear -- the most successful teams in the National Football League, you go back to the last 10 years, 20 years, 100 years -- and we've studied it -- are teams that have long-term sustainability between their coaches and their general managers. And usually the right kind of quarterback."
The biggest change the Falcons made this offseason was at defensive coordinator, replacing Jimmy Lake with Jeff Ulbrich, formerly of the New York Jets. Ulbrich is an experienced defensive coordinator and had worked with Morris in Atlanta on Dan Quinn's staff. When Quinn was fired in 2020, then-defensive coordinator Morris was promoted to interim head coach and he named Ulbrich his defensive coordinator.
"We didn't play well enough," Morris said of parting ways with Lake. "It's a production-based business. ... And as you go through your process, the communication wasn't all the way right. We had ... something we had to fix."
With Penix at quarterback and young stars in running back Bijan Robinson and wide receiver Drake London, the Falcons will go into 2025 with a promising offense. But holes remain on defense, especially in the pass rush. Atlanta signed former Los Angeles Rams and San Francisco 49ers edge rusher Leonard Floyd in what was a relatively quiet free-agent period due to salary cap constraints. But the team also had to release team captain and hometown favorite Grady Jarrett, a defensive tackle.
Blank pulled no punches about what he expects the Falcons to do later this month with the No. 15 overall pick.
"The emphasis during the draft will be certainly on the defensive side of the ball, and it's pretty obvious to everybody, I would say," the owner said.