Throughout a rollercoaster of a head coaching search, the Falcons seemed to be primed to hire Bill Belichick until it was announced out of nowhere that Raheem Morris had been handed the job.
It was reported that Arthur Blank was nudged away from Belichick due to the impact he’d have on the organization as he was expected to bring an entire entourage with him to Atlanta.
However, there seem to be conflicting sentiments now. WFAN host and former NFL quarterback Boomer Esiason relayed from an NFL executive that it was actually Belichick who wasn’t interested in the Falcons, and that owner Arthur Blank made him an offer.
Boomer Esiason was told by an NFL executive that the Falcons offered Bill Belichick the head coach job, and Bill turned them down. pic.twitter.com/gCt2XurMt8
— Funhouse (@BackAftaThis) February 5, 2024
“I was told yesterday, and I do believe it from the source that I got it from, that supposedly Arthur Blank was bought into Bill Belichick and could have offered him the job,” Esiason said on his “Boomer and Gio” show on Monday.
“I don’t know why guys say no, but legitimately an NFL executive basically told me that they believe that Arthur Blank offered Bill the job. Now there may have been some caveats to that offer, you never know, it’s never ‘OK Bill, I want you, here’s a five-year contract, you do whatever you want.’ I don’t think it was one of those.”
This is certainly a new bit of information, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true. Blank was enamored with Belichick, and Albert Breer reported he wanted to hire Belichick “the head coach” but not all of the other roles he assumed in New England. There were also rumors that Belichick and McKay wouldn’t work together. That certainly feels like it could be a factor in either side not giving ground.
“The way it was made and sounded to me was like ‘OK, I understand your concerns, but you’re gonna have to deal with some of this and we want you to come in, we want you to be the coach,’ and then maybe he just thought better of it,” Esiason said.
“And just maybe he said ‘You know what? I don’t want to go right back in. I want a year away. I want to see what happens,’ because as we know there will be about five or six job openings next year, and there may be a better situation where an owner says ‘you know what? I wanna go down this path with you and I want you to take my building over and I want you to run it the way that you ran it with the New England Patriots.’”
I have absolutely no idea what story to believe because the Falcons seemed juvenile in this search, rather than like a world class franchise. Rumors, reports, etc. frequently leaked.
Even after the Raheem Morris hire was announced, the Falcons subsequently announced that Rich McKay wouldn’t be in football operations anymore. Then, Brett Jewkes went on a PR Twitter thread about how thorough the process was and how Blank wasn’t panicked — blah, blah, blah. It just felt like a direct response to the noise from outside the organization.
I can compartmentalize my excitement and confidence in Raheem Morris and Terry Fontenot while remaining skeptical of Arthur Blank and Rich McKay.
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Photographer: Fred Kfoury III/Icon Sportswire
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