AJC:Search is on: Falcons must define coach's role

[TK]

http://www.ajc.com/falcons/content/sports/falcons/1203/12falcons.html

Search is on: Falcons must define coach's role

By MATT WINKELJOHN

Atlanta Journal-Constitution Staff Writer

Flowery Branch -- It's a good bet that Falcons officials began their search for a new head coach Thursday.

Owner Arthur Blank, who told coach Dan Reeves Tuesday that he would be fired after the season, said he felt that word would soon get out that team officials were beginning background checks on candidates to succeed Reeves. Told he wouldn't be the coach next year, Reeves decided he didn't even want to be the coach next week.

And so the search was on. All teams have access to an electronic database of profiles of every NFL coach and access to a library of videotape interviews of many NFL assistant coaches.

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"Certain people, you're free to talk to now," Blank said, referring to college coaches and unemployed former NFL coaches. "Others [coaches currently employed in the NFL] you can't, but you can do a lot of reference, a lot of work behind the scenes and that's critical."

At this stage, there's room for a lot of speculation.

LSU coach Nick Saban, who was a fine defensive coordinator with the Browns in the mid-1990s while working under former Cleveland coach Bill Belichick, may be at the top of Blank's list. But Saban, 52, is already very well paid, and school officials have suggested that he's about to get a huge raise, perhaps to become the highest-paid college coach in the country.

There were some reports by Louisiana media Thursday that Blank met last Friday with Saban when his team was in Atlanta for the SEC Championship Game. But when Blank was asked why he wasn't at Falcons practice last Friday, as usual, he said he was at a Chamber of Commerce function (he's president of the Chamber), and, "I've never spoken with him."

Blank also plans to hire a general manager, and there is widespread sentiment that the the strongest candidate is current Buccaneers general manager Rich McKay, whom Blank interviewed for the job in the winter of 2002.

McKay approached current Maryland coach Ralph Friedgen, 56, about the Tampa Bay job before the family of Bucs owner Malcolm Glazer hired Jon Gruden away from the Raiders in 2002.

Friedgen, though, told the Washington Post, "The only way I'm leaving here is if we decide we don't want to be the best or if they stop listening to what I want to do. Right now I'm here for the duration."

Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz, 48, also worked under Belichick in Cleveland as an offensive line coach, and is considered a strong candidate for an NFL job.

The names of other college coaches may come up, including Oklahoma's Bob Stoops, Virginia Tech's Frank Beamer and USC's Pete Carroll, who previously coached the Jets and Patriots.

But it's worth considering that NFL teams follow trends, and the recent hirings of two ultra-successful college coaches haven't worked well in Washington, where former Florida coach Steve Spurrier is languishing, and Cleveland, where former Miami coach Butch Davis is on shaky ground.

So if you're looking at current NFL coaches, and especially if you're into prior affiliations, remember that McKay worked with Rams defensive coordinator Lovie Smith when Smith, 45, was a Bucs assistant from 1996-'00. Smith is one of the most highly respected current coordinators in the NFL.

Recent reports that Jets coach Herman Edwards has an escape clause in his contract are wrong. Sources involved in the negotiation of his contract confirmed Thursday that Edwards simply has a clause that will enable him to re-open contract talks in search of a raise and/or extension.

The names of former Jaguars coach Tom Coughlin, former Vikings coach Dennis Green, and former Dallas and Miami coach Jimmy Johnson have surfaced.

Johnson, a broadcaster with Fox, has repeatedly said he's not coming out of retirement, although the recent successful return to the NFL of Cowboys coach Bill Parcells -- who frequently said the same kind of thing -- might encourage Blank to try to recruit Johnson nonetheless.

Blank has said that former Redskins coach and current Falcons board member Joe Gibbs, who paid $9 million to buy 1.67 percent of the Falcons in March 2002, isn't interested in the job.

When Blank said, "We are developing a pretty detailed profile of what we want this [next] head coach to look like, and there are a number of [issues]. Finding Superman will be very difficult," he wasn't kidding.

The NFL has grown stricter in recent years in laying out a map for interviewing coaching candidates, largely in an attempt to help minorities secure jobs, but also to eliminate some other gray areas that can crop up.

Basically, teams have to explain to candidates up front what they expect from their coach.

The NFL Committee on Workplace Diversity, of which Blank and chief administrative officer Ray Anderson are members, recently issued several guidelines, including this one:

"First, prior to beginning the interview process, a club should prepare a job description that clearly and fully defines the role of its head coach and the qualities it is looking for in its head coach. Such basic questions as the extent of authority, reporting relationships to the owner and other club executives, responsibility for player personnel and salary cap management, and supervisory duties relating to other club staff need to and should be addressed."

While league policies also dictate that teams searching for a head coach must interview at least one minority candidate in person (Smith, Edwards and Green are African American), Blank has some specifics already in mind.

He wants a coach who will be comfortable with his hands-on involvement. "I definitely want somebody that's going to be comfortable in that situation, comfortable with me and I'll be comfortable with them," Blank said.

So the new coach will have to be comfortable with the idea that he won't have a stranglehold on power in the organization.

"We will pretty much control the scope of responsibility between the head coach and the general manager up front, because we understand the kind of organization, in terms of checks and balances, that we want to have," Blank said. "I think that's very, very important."

The clock is ticking. At least a half dozen NFL teams are likely to soon be in the market for head coaches, part of the reason Blank moved early to part company with Reeves.

The Falcons research coaches currently employed by NFL teams, but cannot interview them until after their teams' seasons end, or, in the case of teams in the playoffs, between games in the first two rounds of the playoffs, but not on Saturdays or Sundays. After the first two rounds, all coaches with teams still in the playoffs are off limits until their teams are eliminated.

Blank has said his preference is to hire a general manager first. But when asked if he settled on a current college head coach (he said college assistants are unlikely to be considered), and that coach or his athletics director said the move had to be made in short order rather than after the season so as not to disrupt recruiting and so forth, he said that was possible.

"We may be in a position where we're going to have to make this decision without having a GM here," Blank said. "That's a distinct possibility. It's not ideal, but again, having [senior adviser] Bobby [beathard] here, having Ray here, having [vice president of football operations] Ron Hill here, having support from the outside if necessary in a variety of other ways, I feel comfortable doing that, but it'll depend on the circumstances.

"We can hire a coach . . . [who] would fit the vision and description of what we're looking for and obviously, we would be hiring a general manager based on the fit and description that we had in mind [for that job] as well, and we want those two to be compatible. If the GM felt that that [coach] was never compatible with the way they chose to operate, they wouldn't be the right person for this job."