Arthur Blank, Atlanta Falcons Owner

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A peanut butter M&M's production. In a world where Super Bowl winners get the world's admiration and a fancy ring, but the runners-up get nothing. One retired cop returns. That's one retired quarterback. Read the script.

Oh, sorry. One retired quarterback returns to claim what's his. That's claim a ring with diamonds made from M&M's peanut butter, but you're on a roll. The Ring of Comfort coming soon to a Super Bowl new you. Now joining us is the owner of the Atlanta Falcons. We had Bijan Robinson join us earlier.

Absolutely love Bijan Robinson and everything that he is about. And we appreciate so much the owner of the Atlanta Falcons and Arthur Blank joining us on the Zach Gelb show on CBS Sports Radio. Mr. Blank, appreciate the time.

Thanks so much for doing this. How are you? I'm doing great.

Thank you. And I'm glad you love Bijan. We love him too. And I think he could be a great rookie year. I think he could be an MVP one day in the NFL. He's got, you know, incredible talent.

There's no question about it. And he's an incredible young man. Got a beautiful personality, beautiful spirit and and obviously a really, really good player. So he had a really fine first year and look forward to consider seeing him grow. I was very optimistic about your team headed into the year. I picked you guys to win the NFC South. Obviously, now you've made a coaching change.

The season didn't go the way that you wanted it to. How do you kind of reflect on this past year of Falcons football? Well, I think, you know, if you look at from a positive standpoint, I think there's no question our roster over the last three years has been improved. We've got a lot of a lot of weapons, I think, on offense. And we have a really good offensive line, which is critical to be playing effectively on offense in the NFL. It's one of the better ones, I think, in the league. We've run the ball well consistently for the last two or three years.

I think, you know, people like Drake London, Kyle Pitts, Bijan Robinson, all very talented. Clearly the area that we're deficient, which in the NFL is kind of a sign of death, is that our quarterback play was not what it needed to be. And that hurt us significantly throughout the year in a whole variety of ways. For defense, I think we made some really good investments in free agency last year. And I think those players have played really well. Our young draft picks are doing well, I think, on defense as well. So I'm excited about where the roster is. I mean, we have a major question, a major answer with quarterback and whether we fill it with trade, draft, free agency.

We're studying any and all options now and we'll be very intensely over the next two or three weeks, next couple of months. I have to ask you, as there was a lot of speculation about Bill Belichick. Sure, of course. And clearly there's reports out there that Rich McKay didn't want Bill. Then Boomer Esiason said you guys offered the job to Bill and he turned you guys down. What's the truth when you hear all that? Was Bill ever offered the job? Well, thank you for asking about the truth.

It's unfortunately sometimes in the media business that we're all in, things get bandied around and what have you. So we had two good interviews with Bill. To make it absolutely clear, Bill never asked for, never requested, never required any sort of power structure.

He was interested only working in collaboration. I think over 24 years he had built up a certain structure in New England that, you know, winning six Super Bowls and the league had changed over time. I think they felt ready for a change and Bill understood that, etc. So they moved on. I think Bill was primarily interested in being a head coach and certainly his credentials over 24 years are incredible. Last four years have not been probably the best. And people could argue, well, neither have his draft picks and his free agency.

But, you know, it's a variety of things. So we had healthy conversations with him. No job was ever offered to him. I mean, that was absolutely 100 percent, 1000 percent the truth.

And Bill will tell you the same thing. The only job offer he ever made was to Raheem Marves, who we felt after looking at all 14 candidates and all of the pros and cons, we were able to teach one with a really good class of opportunities in front of us, that Raheem was the best choice for us. Great cultural leader, great leadership ability. Beyond that is 23 years in the NFL, a tamper early on as a head coach for hard learning life experiences there. Washington, six years with us, offensive defense, Super Bowl.

Didn't end well, but went on. L.A. had, I think, three powerful growth years for him working with Sean McVeigh, working with Les Kneade, working in a very open, collaborative, lateral thinking organization was very helpful to him. I think I saw that in the way he was chiseling together his coaching staff, his ideas and how to do that and how to not just do it initially, but how to plan for success and then continue to have success after hopefully some of these coordinators and position coaches that we're bringing in. We move on to other opportunities because of our success. So I think professionally he matured a great deal in Los Angeles.

And so we're excited about Raheem, excited about what he brings to the franchise and what he brings to the NFL. And that perception was out there from the start that you really wanted, Bill. Like when you started out this search, did Raheem kind of win you over or was that the initial intention to have Bill as the coach?

No, it was never the initial intention. I mean, Bill, the only reason we interviewed he early and Jim Harbaugh early, as an example, both of those gentlemen, because they were available. And we could not interview anybody in person prior to January 22nd unless they were unemployed.

And those two individuals were not employed then by anybody in the NFL. So we pursued those interviews then. And I mean, I learned a lot during the process. Always do.

You don't want to do the process too often for all the obvious reasons. But you do learn a lot about your roster and about how other people view your team and what you have to do to get to the next level. So I'm excited about where we are. We had a lot of good candidates in front of us. I personally think that Bill will definitely has the fire and the energy and the enthusiasm to coach again.

I'd be surprised if he didn't coach again next year. But I mean, I don't know. I'm not sure that. But I think I had no issues with our conversation with him.

They're all very open, transparent, just very positive in a whole variety of ways. Last thing I'll ask you is the owner of the Falcons, Arthur Blank is here with us. You just got to get the quarterback. I don't think people care how you get the quarterback. Right. But is the preference via free agency is the preference via the draft for you.

You know, I think it's a really good question because, you know, the preference is that, you know, the last great quarterback we had was Matt Ryan. Yeah, I did the ALS ice bucket challenge with him yesterday. OK, great. Yeah. Right here yesterday.

Yeah, I'll show you the video. Oh, my Lord. You're still doing that. Yeah. I thought that 10 year anniversary.

Oh, Lord. So, Matt, you know, obviously 2008 and 14 years after that, you know, what I would argue is almost a Hall of Fame career. But, you know, but an outstanding quarterback, a great human being, an outstanding quarterback. I mean, that's really what you want. It's really the kind of franchise transitions you want to see.

It's not easy to do. Obviously done in Green Bay. They drafted Jordan Love early, kept him on the bench for a while, played by Aaron. Aaron moved on.

Jordan stepped up this year, played at a high level. So you're looking for a long term solution. Yeah. Sometimes in a long term solution, you have to have an interim solution, too. I only got 10 seconds. So you got to do some sometimes mixture of both.

But ideally, long term, you're looking for that franchise quarterback. Thanks so much. I appreciate it.

Thank you for your time. Okay. Picture this. It's Friday afternoon when a thought hits you. I can spend another weekend doing the same old whatever, or I can hop into my all new Hyundai Santa Fe and hit the road with available H-Track all wheel drive and three row seating. My whole family can head deep into the wild, conquer the weekend in the all new Hyundai Santa Fe. Visit HyundaiUSA.com or call 562-314-4603 for more details. Hyundai. There's joy in every journey.

2024 Santa Fe available early 2024. I'm Tony and this is the Tony Kornheiser show. Well, that makes it sound a bit more serious than it really is. So what exactly is the show about? Been almost 30 years and I still don't know. Right now, we have some of the best voices in football come on to explain to us what we need to know in the college and pro world.

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