The Atlanta Falcons have a bye in Week 14, and it couldn’t come at a better time as the team is on a two-game losing streak and dealing with a quarterback controversy.
On Sunday, the Falcons suffered a 19-16 loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers to fall to 5-8 on the season. With the team’s playoff chances dwindling, it sounds as if head coach Arthur Smith and his staff are at least seriously considering making a change at quarterback.
At Smith’s Monday press conference, he was peppered with questions about the QB situation. Here are five notable quotes from the Falcons head coach.
1
Falcons have "intense meetings' planned
“We will have some very intense meetings in the next couple of days. Obviously, I know where we’re at. We understand, too, that we’ve been in some close games lately and we need to get back over the hump. There will be changes made. Everything that we decide to do I will be as transparent as possible.”
2
Smith on Marcus Mariota's wife going into labor
“Marcus isn’t even in the building today, his wife went into labor this morning. So, congrats to him hopefully. They haven’t had the baby yet but it’ll be his first child. So there’s things like that that come up.”
3
Smith on circumstances changing
“You don’t want to look like you’re just blaming one person, and if you think it’s the best thing for you at that moment then, yeah, we’re going to do that. That’s what you’re paid to do, but circumstances are very different today than they were a couple weeks ago.”
4
Smith on not wanting to make knee-jerk reaction
“What you don’t want is to have a knee-jerk reaction, which I don’t think, after 13 games, that you are. What we try to do every Monday is be objective and tell the truth in the meetings, and there’s a way to do that without taking shots at anybody’s dignity or whatever. We’ll never do that. It’s called coaching, you know, and being objective and coaching things.”
5
Smith on Falcons needing to get back in win column
“You can say ‘close’ all day, but we need to get back into that win column. There are some things that are trending in the right direction that give you a chance every week. But there’s certain things that we need to enhance, and we will.”
