Dan Quinn’s tenure in Atlanta ended last night. He finished his career with the Falcons one game above .500 in the regular season and 3-2 in playoffs, the second-best and tied-for-the-best mark in franchise history, respectively. In a vacuum, that’s a tenure that should result in significant appreciation, but nothing that’s happening now is happening in a vacuum.
As was the case with Mike Smith before him, Quinn leaves the Falcons under a cloud of pessimism and outright anger. Unlike Smith, whose tenure is appreciated more as time goes on, I suspect the DQ era will be remembered with more bitterness, both because the Falcons came so very close to winning a Super Bowl and because the team held on too long to the dream that he could get them back there again.