Falcons Coach Petrino Quits; Signs with Arkansas

I heard Peter King mention it, but felt the Falcons were going to go with one of their coordinators. I hope this finally puts to death the idea of bringing in high profile college coaches and think they can win in the NFL. The styles of football are just too different. Plus as soon as they fail there is 40 or 50 colleges who will hire the guy away from your team.

Heres what I don't understand: With this guy's history of doing this didn't the falcons put a penalty into the contract? If so, then who is paying for the penalty? I'd be pissed if I was an Arkansas alum or student and found out in addition to his salary we had to pay the falcons a few million to get him out of that contract.

That all goes on the front office of the Falcons. They definitely should have put something in his contract along those lines and from what I've heard they didn't, and their GM Rich McKay is an attorney so you think he would have known better to protect the Falcons best interests!

I'm surprised we haven't heard Marty's name come up more often when talking about potential jobs for next year.

In fact, the local radio schlubs (La Canforism) here in Atlanta have brought up his name repeatedly today. While Emmitt Thomas, an asst. w/ the Fulcans, has been named the interim coach, there's no way in hell he will be anything more than just that...temporary. Marty probably wouldn't be a good fit here given that McKay is the GM and Marty wants to wear all of the hats. Speaking of Marty, damn, wasn't he the coach that had the 'Skins win their last 5 or so games when he was in D.C.? I still think he would have righted our ship even if he was a stubborn old crotchety fart.

I heard Peter King mention it, but felt the Falcons were going to go with one of their coordinators. I hope this finally puts to death the idea of bringing in high profile college coaches and think they can win in the NFL. The styles of football are just too different. Plus as soon as they fail there is 40 or 50 colleges who will hire the guy away from your team.

Heres what I don't understand: With this guy's history of doing this didn't the falcons put a penalty into the contract? If so, then who is paying for the penalty? I'd be pissed if I was an Arkansas alum or student and found out in addition to his salary we had to pay the falcons a few million to get him out of that contract.

I get the feeling that they really wanted to see if Petrino was worth a damn and then possibly renegotiate his contract down the road. I don't think that Blank and McKay are going to miss Petrino very much and just move on.