The Atlanta Falcons Need Many Things, but Doug Marrone Isn't One of Them

As 2015 begins and the Atlanta Falcons try to shake off the stink of a losing season punctuated by a devastating blowout loss in Week 17 that cost the team the NFC South, the team is in the market for any number of improvements. Among them is a new head coach, as Mike Smith was shown the door after seven up-and-down seasons.

However, as the Falcons go about searching for a potential replacement, at least one target would do no more that trade one set of problems for another, possibly even bigger, set.

As Alex Marvez of Fox Sports reported, ex-Buffalo Bills head coach Doug Marrone, who shocked the NFL by essentially walking away from the Bills on New Year's Eve, interviewed for the same job with the Falcons on Monday:

Mind you, there are those who think that whoever hires Marrone will be getting a steal, including Adam Schein of NFL.com:

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Christmas came late for teams in need of a coach when Marrone opted out of his contract with the Bills on New Year's Eve. As I've said many times -- in this space, on the radio, on TV -- Marrone is a fantastic coach. After all, this is a guy who just won nine games in Buffalo without a legit quarterback and without Kiko Alonso playing a single down. And this kind of overachievement is nothing new for Marrone's teams. He took over a Syracuse program that the overmatched Greg Robinson had completely run into the ground (see: 10-37 record from 2005-08) and rebuilt the Orange into a winner over the span of four years.

Hall of Famer Curtis Martin recently gushed about Marrone to the New York Post. (Marrone was an assistant with the Jets when Martin was on the squad.) Drew Brees cherished his time with Marrone, who was the Saints' offensive coordinator during Brees' first three years in New Orleans.

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Sure enough, Brees had good things to say about his former offensive coordinator back when Marrone took the job in Buffalo prior to the 2013 season:

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I am thrilled for Doug and his family. I really enjoyed my time working with him when he was here with the Saints. Doug is a coach who cares deeply about his players. It was fun to watch him resurrect the program at his alma mater, Syracuse, and I know that the feeling in our organization was that he would have success doing that very quickly. This is a great opportunity for Doug and I can tell you that there are a lot of people here at the Saints that are proud to see him having earned this opportunity with the Bills.

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As Ian Rapoport of NFL.com tweeted, Marrone also led the Bills to their first nine-win season since 2004, despite any number of distractions swirling around the team:

However, there are also plenty of pundits who don't understand what all the hullabaloo is about:

And that's because there are more red flags with Marrone than at a ping-pong tournament in China.

After Marrone's stunning departure from Buffalo, Manish Mehta of The New York Daily News published a story that most certainly did not cast Marrone in the same glowing light as Schein.

There were the reports of a petty control freak who picked on those he could and kissed up to those he couldn't:

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'It’s about power and control,' a source said. 'That is what drives Doug Marrone. That’s why he is a very dangerous person to have inside the building.'

Marrone’s need to control the message reached strange levels.

He wanted to approve video clips before they were posted on the Bills website, according to a source. He didn’t want any details of EJ Manuel’s interceptions during practices on the site, either.

Sources said that Marrone belittled people across all levels of the organization. From the front office to the media relations department to reporters to players, he tried to disparage perceived easy targets. His poor treatment of those people didn’t go unnoticed.

Marrone didn’t berate everyone. If he felt that you could further his cause, he would tolerate — or even engage — you. However, one person who was treated with respect by Marrone in the past two years told the Daily News that he never felt it was authentic.

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The report ended with a scathing assessment of Marrone the NFL head coach:

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Marrone’s inflated stock is the work of a savvy agent and well-placed friends. None of those apologists, however, can erase what people in Buffalo have known for the past two years.

Strip away the spin and here’s what’s left:

'He is the definition of average,' said a Buffalo source.

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Granted, given how Marrone left the team (players found out from the media, only to receive a mass text from Marrone later that night), it's hardly a stretch to presume that some of this Marrone-bashing is borne of good old hurt feelings.

With that said, though, let's look at a few things we do know about Marrone.

We know that he clashed with general manager Doug Whaley and the Bills front office. So much so, in fact, that as Jason La Canfora of CBS Sports reports, Marrone and team president Russ Brandon nearly came to blows on the practice field in September:

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The incident began with Marrone, who sources said has had a strained relationship with director of player personnel Jim Monos from their time together in New Orleans, getting into a loud exchange with Monos in which the men were cursing at each other to the point where others noticed ('they were more or less MFing each other,' is how one source put it). General manager Doug Whaley then intervened. The expletives continued and finally team president and acting owner Russ Brandon tried to defuse the situation by getting involved in an attempt to get all parties to 'shut up,' as one source put it. But that too escalated into more yelling and hollering, with Brandon and Marrone ultimately separated by their peers and Marrone, in earshot of players, making remarks along the lines of 'go ahead and fire me,' before order was restored and the team took the field for practice.

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In La Canfora's report, a source claims that Marrone referred to himself on numerous occasions as "Saint Doug," due to "the fact that it takes two miracles to be canonized as a saint, and that he already pulled off one miracle by winning at Syracuse and alluding to the fact it would take another miracle to win in Buffalo."

Now, reports (including from ESPN's Adam Schefter) have surfaced claiming that Marrone essentially threw a hissy-fit when the Bills traded up to draft wide receiver Sammy Watkins in the first round of May's NFL draft:

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According to sources in the Bills' draft room, former Buffalo head coach Doug Marrone clearly was not happy with the trade.

Marrone was not in favor of Buffalo surrendering a future first-round pick to the Cleveland Browns in a trade that did not involve a quarterback, sources said.

There are different accounts of exactly how unhappy Marrone was, with some sources recalling he stormed out of the room, and other sources simply saying he walked out of the room.

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Marrone also clashed with players. According to Jay Skurski of The Buffalo News, Marrone got into it with defensive end Jerry Hughes after berating the team during an August practice:

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“Get your (expletive) right,” he screamed at the team as he ordered them to line up on the sideline to run a sprint.

Defensive end Jerry Hughes said something back to the coach, leading Marrone to direct a string of expletives at him, saying at one point “you don’t have to play on this team.” Hughes’ teammates implored him to step away from the confrontation.

Following practice, Marrone pulled Hughes out of the defensive line’s huddle for a conversation.

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By November it was veteran safety Aaron Williams who publicly questioned Marrone's conservative style, according to Mehta:

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'It’s been too many times where . . . we don’t take chances,' defensive back Aaron Williams told The Buffalo News after a Week 11 loss to the Dolphins. 'I feel like teams around this league, the reason why they’re successful most times is because they do take chances. . . . I encourage Coach to be aggressive and just believe in the defense.'

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Even running back Fred Jackson, one of Marrone's staunchest supporters in the Buffalo locker room, bristled at how Marrone handled his departure, according to ESPN's Mike Rodak:

"Any time you get a text message saying that it's happening, you feel like you got punched in the stomach. I mean, stuff could have been handled different. We don't ... we all weren't in the room and understand what went down."

OK, so Marrone isn't a people person. Neither is the head coach of the Bills' AFC East rivals in New England, and last I heard Bill Belichick has done OK for himself.

For Marrone to be generating all this interest despite these reports, he must be a real offensive whiz, right?

Well, if he is, we didn't see much evidence of it in Buffalo.

In two seasons as head coach of the Bills, the team ranked 19th (2013) and 26th (2014) in the league in total offense. Yes, the team's situation at quarterback was far from ideal, but a coach with Marrone's offensive pedigree should be able to do more with less a la Bruce Arians in Arizona, right?

Right?

Frankly, if the Falcons wanted a piece of the coach most responsible for the Bills' nine wins in 2014, they should be talking to defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz. The Bills' 10th-ranked defense (a defense that led the NFL in sacks in 2014) carried the team all season long.

And that's part of the problem with Marrone to Atlanta. Yes, the Falcons offense needs work. Quarterback Matt Ryan, while still easily an above-average NFL signal-caller, has regressed a bit over the past two seasons.

The offensive line also badly needs improvement, and 2014 first-round pick Jake Matthews certainly appears to need some coaching up after a rocky rookie year. The offensive line is Marrone's specialty.

However, not only has Marrone shown nothing as a head coach to indicate he's the guy that would return Ryan and the Falcons offense to the elite status they enjoyed not too long ago, but a strong argument can be made that the team's dumpster fire of a defense has to be priority No. 1 for the Falcons in 2015.

Luckily for the Falcons, this may well be much ado about nothing. Any number of pundits, including La Canfora, think that Marrone to the New York Jets is all but a fait accompli. Some have theorized that Marrone left the Bills the way he did with the Jets' job in his back pocket.

Good. Let Gang Green have him. If half these reports about Marrone are true, he should fit in splendidly in that sideshow.

And yet, it appears now that Marrone may even have loused that up:

This is a vital hire for the Falcons. Ryan turns 30 in May. Star wide receiver Julio Jones will hit free agency after the 2015 season.

The Falcons seem to realize this. So much so, in fact, that the NFL Network's Ian Rapoport recently reported that the new head coach in Atlanta will have a say in the future of embattled general manager Thomas Dimitroff:

As an aside, that's nuts. Fire Dimitroff. Don't fire him. Pick one. Leaving him twisting in the wind while waiting to see if he can be BFFs with the new coach is lunacy, especially when you then turn around and interview a coach who hasn't shown any ability to get along with anyone.

At the end of the day, it's imperative that the Falcons see through the smoke and realize that the hype around Marrone is mostly self-manufactured, by a coach who appears to be all about one thing:

Himself.

Is Doug Marrone the absolute worst candidate the Bills could hire as their 16th head coach? No. He's also not the best—by a long shot.

And moving on from Mike Smith by hiring Doug Marrone reeks of taking one step forward at the expense of two steps back.

Gary Davenport is an NFL Analyst at Bleacher Report and a member of the Fantasy Sports Writers Association and the Pro Football Writers of America. You can follow Gary on Twitter @IDPManor.