In this series, I will be looking at the history of coaches, quarterbacks, rushers, and receivers for all 32 franchises. For coaches and quarterbacks, I will be looking at how much their franchise’s career records (regular season only) would change if we removed the games with that person. For rushers and receivers, I will note how many times that player was the team’s leading rusher/receiver over the course of their time with that franchise (regular plus postseason).

Previous Teams:

AFC East: Dolphins, Bills, Jets, and Patriots
NFC East: Cowboys, Eagles, Giants, and Redskins
AFC North: Steelers, Browns, Ravens, and Bengals
NFC North: Packers, Vikings, Bears, and Lions
AFC South: Jaguars, Colts
NFC South: Panthers

We have entered the Marion Campbell portion of the series. One of Football Perspective’s best guest profiles was on Marion Campbell, owner of some of the worst coaching records in history. He’s the only coach to win no more than 25% of his games over a 65+ game stretch with one team, and one of just four coaches (David Shula in Cincinnati, Dom Capers with the expansion Texans, and Gus Bradley with the Jaguars) to win less than 30% of his games with one franchise over at least 60 games. The most successful coach in Falcons history is, without question but still weird to say, Mike Smith. Atlanta as a franchise has won 44.2% of its games, but remove the Smith games, and that number drops by 2.34% to just 41.9%. And don’t feel too bad for the team’s first coach, Norb Hecker, who took over the expansion Falcons and went just 4-26-1. He wound up with eight NFL titles: one with the Rams in 1951 as a rookie safety, three with the Lombardi Packers, and then four with the 49ers in the ’80s. The table below shows every head coach in Falcons history:

But the most impactful person in Falcons history is clearly Matt Ryan. As football fans, we probably don’t give enough credit to Ryan, who is sometimes considered the third best quarterback in his own division. But under Ryan, the Falcons have a 0.586 winning percentage; without Ryan, Atlanta has only a 0.403 winning percentage. That number rises to 0.442 overall all-time, which means Ryan starts have improved the team’s winning percentage by 3.9%. That is the 5th-best mark for any quarterback with one team since 1950: the others are three inner circle Hall of Famers and Ryan contemporaries (Tom Brady with the Patriots, Drew Brees with the Saints, and Peyton Manning with the Colts) and Mark Brunell, highlighted a week ago. The second-best quarterback by this metric is Michael Vick, who obviously has a complicated history with Falcons fans. That said, he was 23-23 for his career as a starting quarterback outside of Atlanta, and 38-28-1 with the Falcons. Steve Bartkowski is arguably the 2nd-best quarterback in Falcons history, but he played during a pretty rough era in team history. Finally, we have Randy Johnson, who managed to go 3-8 as a rookie with the expansion Falcons, and it only got worse from there. He finished 8-28-1 with the team, and then 2-11 with three other teams before retiring.

The Falcons have have a few running backs that had high peaks, like William Andrews (#1 fantasy RB in ’81, #2 in ’83), Devonta Freeman (#1 fantasy RB in ’15), Michael Turner (#2 in ’08), Jamal Anderson (#2 in ’98), and Gerald Riggs (#4 fantasy RB in ’84 and ’85). Which player has led the team in rushing yards most often? The answer below. Oh, and don’t skip over Michael Vick, who led the team in rushing in 29% of his games and over 30% of his starts:

Finally, we get to the best player in Falcons history: wide receiver Julio Jones. The all-pro has led the team in receiving yards in 61% of his games, and that’s despite playing alongside Roddy White and Tony Gonzalez for a good chunk of them. Since the start of the 2014 season, Jones has led the team in receiving in 60 of the 90 games in which he was active, and 13 of his last 18 games!

That’s it for the Falcons version of this series. Please leave your thoughts in the comments.