Despite what you may hear, good things do happen after midnight.
The Atlanta Falcons gave us long-suffering fans a post-Christmas gift by canning Arthur Smith at 12:01 Monday morning (not sure what the significance was in the timing, but it seems as if there should be).
So, let’s move on from — and this a tough list to top — the most under-achieving coaching tenure in team history. OK, maybe Marion Campbell Part II was worse, but let’s just skip ahead.
This was the season when it was all supposed to come together under Smith, the supposed offensive genius who was going to unleash his plethora of weapons on the league.
Skip ahead and we all know what happened. Smith’s offense was confounding. The defense, the focus of the offseason free agent spending spree, was never able to get stops when needed most. Going 7-10 in his first season was expected. Going 7-10 last year was a bit more annoying. Doing it again this year was inexcusable.