I hope you won't consider this raining on your collective parade.
ESPN's Pat Yasinskas reports that Bob Bratkowski—aka the Polish Playcaller—is the in-house candidate du jour, which makes sense. He was hired as the quarterbacks coach this year and it was widely understood that he'd be in line for a promotion if Mike Mularkey left. You should not take this to mean that Bratkowski is definitely the guy, because he's not. The Falcons will look at other candidates, I promise you.
What recommends Bratkowski? Caleb had a great but poorly formatted post—sorry, can't seem to fix that—last month that you'll want to read. He presided over a very effective passing offense that could batter the ball when necessary, largely thanks to the strength of Carson Palmer's arm. He's not a lot more aggressive or creative than Mularkey, at least to these eyes, but he is at least somewhat more so. The offense would evolve a bit under him, most likely, because he can do it and that's what the organization would like to see.
Keep in mind that young receivers like Chris Henry and T.J. Houshmanzadeh blossomed under his Cincinnati tenure. That's not insignificant when the Falcons have Julio Jones and are likely to either chase a young receiver in the draft or take a hard look at guys like Kevin Cone and Drew Davis.
Still.
Personally, I'd rather do something drastically different. Get someone like Hue Jackson in Atlanta, especially after we watched him do nice things with the Raiders offense. I know he kind of threw his team under the bus, but lots of great coordinators have done stupid or awful things as head coaches. Heck, take on a young, promising college offensive coordinator. Or you could even go for Steve Logan, the former Boston College offensive coordinator currently serving as the Tampa Bay running backs coach and the guy responsible for tutoring Ryan in his college days. After four years of good but not great, let's aim for the Oort Cloud and see how far our shot goes.
Given Mike Smith's well-established aversion to drastic change, that may be wishful thinking. But Thomas Dimitroff and Arthur Blank do have a say here, and so I would not count anything out. These Falcons have surprised me before.
If Bratkowski does get hired, let's give him a chance. Whatever his faults, he's not another Mike Mularkey.