Falcons’ game management coach Kyle Flood departs to become Alabama’s OL coach

After reporting last week that the Falcons had promoted assistant coach Kyle Flood to a game/clock management role—which all of us at The Falcoholic were pretty happy about—we’ve got some other news regarding Flood to report.

Flood will be leaving the Falcons to take the recently-vacated offensive line coach position at Alabama. He’ll be joining Steve Sarkisian—who recently accepted the offensive coordinator position—on Nick Saban’s offensive staff.

It’s a little strange that Flood would immediately leave the Falcons after accepting a promotion, but there isn’t necessarily anything weird going on here. Of all the college jobs that you could leave the NFL for, Alabama is arguably the most desirable. It also appears that Flood has a pretty significant relationship with Steve Sarkisian—both were brought in at the same time in 2017—and you have to think Sark was a big factor in convincing Nick Saban to hire him.

Hopefully Flood’s decision to leave doesn’t prevent the Falcons from bringing in (or promoting) another game/clock management coach. We all know that Quinn struggles with that particular area of head coaching, and now that he’s calling the defense as well it is even more important to have someone assisting Quinn in that area. I’m not sure who the team could bring in, but there have to be plenty of coaches out there looking for an opportunity like this.

What are your thoughts on Kyle Flood’s departure? Do you think the Falcons should bring in another game management coach to replace him, or is there someone on the coaching staff that you’d prefer to promote?