It's no secret the Atlanta Falcons have had a troubled history. The events of the last 15 years reads like the Adam Jones rap sheet:
*Losing Deion Sanders to free-agency
*Signing Jeff George
*The Jeff George/June Jones Sunday-night-fight
*Eugene Robinson's arrest for soliciting an undercover police officer on the eve of the Super Bowl in 1999
*Vick's broken leg and season down the tubes in 2003
*The firing of Dan Reeves
* Various ill-fated free agent signings and draft choices
*The hiring and middle-of-the-season abandonment of Bobby Petrino
*The Michael Vick dog-fighting case
The list goes on and on. Fans have found few bright spots over the years. Just when things look to be turning around for this franchise, an injury ends a season or a comment is made to disengage the fans.
The bad luck is no more evident than in the Falcons' most dubious claim to fame: There has never been back-to-back winning seasons in franchise history.
What has been overlooked, and understandably so in light of the past 15 months, in the Falcons most recent history is the reign of former head coach Jim Mora.
Mora was hired in 2004, virtually out of nowhere, with unrivaled enthusiasm and energy and a plan for the effective use of Vick.
Jim Mora's term began with a bang, engineering the team to an 11-5 record and one win shy of the Super Bowl. His time with the Falcons was often inspiring and at other times disgraceful.
His last season, 2006, began with high hopes on the heels of what was called a disappointing 2005 season, finishing 8-8. Hope spiraled downward as the season progressed and things completely fell apart in the last quarter of that season.
QB Michael Vick upset the fan base when he made an inappropriate gesture to the home fans following a loss to New Orleans in November. What followed was to that point, one of the most disappointing moments in franchise history.
On December 14, 2006, while speaking to a Seattle radio station Jim Mora shared comments that would eventually serve to seal his fate as the Falcons head coach.
Mora, an alumnus of Washington, about the University of Washington head coach position, "if that job's open, you'll find me at the head of the line with my resume in hand ready to take that job."
He continued, "It doesn't matter if I'm available...I don't care if we're in the middle of a playoff run (which the Falcons were at that time). I'm packing my stuff and coming back to Seattle."
By the following day all of Atlanta, stuck in Friday traffic, was listening to the head coach of their team make these comments. A rage unlike anything Mora could have expected followed.
Owner Arthur Blank began immediate damage control expressing his disappointment in the young head coach and Mora began appearing all over the airwaves with a spin stating that he was joking and he was regretful that his comments sounded otherwise.
The writing was on the wall at that point and the team spun further out of control, inciting comments from players regarding a lost team and the fans spoke out, clearly wanting Mora run out of town.
On the first day of 2007 Mora was fired and a new chapter in Atlanta's disgruntled history began. But that's another story.
This past Monday Mora returned to the Atlanta airwaves on 790 The Zone's Mayhem In the A.M. sports-radio show to promote the Jim Mora Count On Me Family Foundation's fundraiser on October 19 (his family is still highly involved in the city's charity circuit) in Atlanta and spoke candidly about the past, his mistakes, and the Atlanta Falcons organization.
Mora began by expressing his remorse for the city's football team's fortunes last season saying, "you never wish that on anybody...I still pull for those people." He also, speaking with the passion he was known for, shared how badly he felt for the Atlanta players. A glimpse was given into just how bad the situation really was inside the locker room when he shared that Petrino was "lucky he didn't run into Lawyer Milloy."
The stark contrast of the two former coaches, Mora and Petrino, is evident when the conversation turned to Mora's notorious relationships with his players. Mora was always available to the media following the games, though not always in good spirits, but always direct about his and his team's performance.
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