Atlanta, GA
Bill Belichick didn’t ask for ‘full control’ of Atlanta Falcons, owner Arthur Blank says
Bill Belichick didn’t ask to be the boss.
Running the Falcons’ front office in the same way he did the Patriots’ wasn’t a requirement for Belichick as he interviewed for Atlanta’s head coaching job, team owner Arthur Blank said.
“Bill Belichick never asked for, in our discussions, full control of the personnel or the building or anything of that nature,” Blank told reporters Friday.
“He was very inclusive, very collaborative. He met [Falcons general manager] Terry Fontenot. He checked out our people, doing his own references. He sent me a private text, which I eventually shared with Terry, that he was happy working with him. … All of these things that were being produced by the media were totally not true.”
Belichick, 71, interviewed twice with the Falcons, including a one-on-one meeting with the Queens-born Blank.
Many considered Belichick, a six-time Super Bowl champion in his 24 seasons as New England head coach, a favorite for the Falcons job, though Atlanta ultimately chose Los Angeles Rams defensive coordinator Raheem Morris.
Belichick operated as the Patriots’ general manager throughout his tenure, which ended last month in what he and owner Robert Kraft described as a mutual decision. The Patriots made the playoffs only once in the four seasons after quarterback Tom Brady left and bottomed out in 2023 with a disastrous 4-13 campaign featuring one of the league’s worst offenses.
“He’s got his history,” Blank said. “He has a way of doing things, etc., which were very, very successful. You could debate, is that true the last four years or so? Might be a little different picture, but there’s a lot of stories behind a lot of things. I think it was a very good series of interviews with him.”
Belichick’s continued unemployment remains a surprise, and there aren’t any NFL head coaching jobs currently open. His 333 wins between the regular season and postseason rank second in NFL history, behind only the 347 compiled by Don Shula.
Belichick also spoke with the Washington Commanders and “had support from some decision makers” about their vacancy, according to The Athletic, before they hired Dallas Cowboys defensive coordinator Dan Quinn.
The Falcons fired Arthur Smith as head coach last month after a 21-30 record over three seasons — a tenure largely defined by a frustratingly conservative offense in which top-10 draft picks Kyle Pitts, Drake London and Bijan Robinson failed to flourish.
Morris spent six years on the Falcons’ staff from 2015-20, serving as defensive coordinator and interim head coach in the last of those seasons. Blank described Morris’ leadership over those years as a “20” on a scale of 1-10 and said his candidacy improved after spending three years with the Rams.
“Today, he’s still a 20. That hasn’t changed,” Blank said. “What I did see change: The three years he had in L.A., where he worked with a different coaching environment, a different kind of setup, which [head coach] Sean McVay operates differently than a lot of other coaches do … was a learning experience for him.”
As he settles in as Pittsburgh Steelers offensive coordinator, Arthur Smith will reportedly head into familiar territory right away. According to WSB-TV’s Zach Klein, the Steelers will head to Atlanta to take on the Falcons in the season opener.
Smith spent the last three years as the Falcons’ head coach, amassing a 21-30 record before his firing after the 2023 season. He then latched on with the Steelers, where he’ll now work with a quarterback room of Russell Wilson and Justin Fields after some major moves this offseason.
According to Klein, Smith won’t have to wait long to return to Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
Smith spoke about his tenure in Atlanta after taking over in Pittsburgh earlier this offseason, pointing out the need to build the roster from scratch during his time at the helm.
“It was a unique situation, essentially rebuilding a team” Smith said, via Falcon Report’s Daniel Flick. “There were some good lessons learned. It was a tough lesson, but it’ll help me here, especially with some of the young players here that we have, and how you fit the offense and try to play to those guys’ strengths.”
Pittsburgh and Atlanta both made major moves at the quarterback position this offseason. Wilson is coming in as the expected starter for the Steelers this year with Fields as his backup while the Falcons signed Kirk Cousins to a lucrative contract and selected Michael Penix Jr. with the No. 8 overall pick in the NFL Draft. Raheem Morris is now at the helm for Atlanta, as well.
Chiefs, Ravens to kick off 2024 NFL season
The full NFL schedule is set to be revealed Wednesday night at 8 p.m. ET, but some games have already been announced. That includes the first game of the year, which will see the two-time defending champions in a rematch of the 2023 AFC Championship.
The Super Bowl LVIII-winning Kansas City Chiefs will take on the Baltimore Ravens in a highly anticipated matchup to start the year. The 2024 NFL season begins on Thursday, Sept. 5, at 8:20 p.m. ET on NBC.
Baltimore 1-3 against the Chiefs with quarterbacks Lamar Jackson and Patrick Mahomes under center. Last time the Chiefs and Ravens were face-to-face, Kansas City won 17-10 and advanced to the championship game against the San Francisco 49ers.
Nikki Chavanelle contributed to this report.
Libby Allnatt
Libby Allnatt is the Editor/Reporter for What Now Atlanta. She has been in the journalism industry since graduating from Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, gathering experience in copy editing, writing and social media. With a passion for helping people find their new favorite places, Libby enjoys highlighting small businesses, trying new coffee shops and exploring a city’s signature spots. Originally from Salt Lake City, she loves discovering all the Peach State has to offer.
Atlanta, GA
Arelion Deploys Two New Routes From Jacksonville to Atlanta and Tallahassee, Expanding Gulf Coast Network
STOCKHOLM, May 14, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — Arelion today announced it has launched two multi-terabit capacity, low-latency routes from Jacksonville, FL to Atlanta, GA and from Jacksonville to Tallahassee, as well as an overbuild from Miami along Florida’s west coast up to Atlanta. These new routes enable Arelion to provide fully diverse connectivity services from Jacksonville to Atlanta via two direct routes. Arelion’s new routes enhance its capability to serve local traffic while also supporting subsea traffic flows into Atlanta from the Caribbean, Central America and South America through subsea cables landing in Jacksonville, continuing the global Internet carrier’s Gulf Coast network expansion.
Arelion’s new routes leverage the latest generation open optical line systems supporting C+L Band, sixth-generation coherent optics and multi-vendor 400G wave capability, empowering Arelion’s wholesale and enterprise customers with high-capacity optical transmission and fast service delivery. These routes will serve Atlanta’s booming data center market and growing Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML) applications, with Atlanta ranking as the sixth largest market for commissioned data center power. These routes seamlessly connect to Arelion’s diverse suburban ring to enhance metro connectivity in Atlanta, enabling Arelion to meet the demand for high-capacity bandwidth in Atlanta’s flourishing regional technology markets.
“These new investments in Georgia and Florida allow Arelion to serve the immense demand for reliable connectivity services and tremendous capacity amid Atlanta’s data center boom,” said Art Kazmierczak, Director of Strategic Sales and Network Development at Arelion. “By providing additional meshing and diversity into Atlanta, we can serve the connectivity requirements of local enterprises while supporting subsea traffic from Jacksonville and other Florida edge markets and sea cable landings, enabling low-latency cloud, content and AI/ML delivery across diverse industries.”
Further insights into this expansion and Arelion’s presence in the Gulf Coast:
- The new routes run from Jacksonville (Cologix-JAX1) to Atlanta (Equinix-AT1) and from Jacksonville (Cologix-JAX1) to Tallahassee (EdgeConnex-TAL01).
- The overbuild route enhances capacity and meshing from Atlanta (Digital Realty-ATL14) to Tallahassee (EdgeConnex-TAL01), continuing via Tampa (365 Data Centers) down to Miami (Equinix-MI1).
- Additional metro sites in Jacksonville include Telxius CLS and EdgeConnex.
- Tallahassee is a new market for Arelion, providing a local edge Point-of-Presence (PoP) and meshing/routing flexibility in the region.
- Additional metro sites in Tampa include the recently announced Flexential Tampa – North site.
- Arelion now has four diverse route options into Jacksonville and six diverse route options into Atlanta, with these two new routes going live in Q3 2024.
Arelion’s new routes provide North American customers with enhanced access to Arelion’s #1 ranked global Internet backbone, as well as Arelion’s portfolio of reliable, fully diverse connectivity services, including scalable 400G Wavelengths, IP Transit, Dedicated Internet Access (DIA), Cloud Connect, Global 40G Ethernet Virtual Circuit (VC) and DDoS Mitigation services for service providers, content providers and enterprises.
About Arelion
Arelion solves global connectivity challenges for multinational enterprises whose businesses rely on digital infrastructure. On top of the world’s #1 ranked IP backbone and a unique ecosystem of cloud and network service providers, we provide an award-winning customer experience to customers in more than 125 countries worldwide. Our global Internet services connect more than 700 cloud, security and content providers with low latency. For further resilience, our private Cloud Connect service connects directly to Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, IBM Cloud and Oracle cloud across North America, Europe and Asia. Discover more at Arelion.com, and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.
Contacts:
Arelion
Martin Sjögren, Senior Manager PR and Analyst Relations
+46 (0)707 770 522
[email protected]
Media Contact
Jeannette Bitz, Engage PR
+1 510 295 4972
[email protected]
SOURCE Arelion
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