Falcons request interview with Panthers OC Joe Brady

The Falcon promised to hit the ground running on their coaching and general manager searches after the season ended, and so far they’ve certainly lived up to that promise. Today alone, we’ve seen the team either reportedly interviewing or requesting to interview four head coaching candidates and three general manager candidates, keeping up a brisk pace working through a list loaded with genuinely interesting names.

The latest addition to that list is current Panthers offensive coordinator and former LSU offensive coordinator Joe Brady. As the Panthers are hanging out on the posteason couch with the Falcons, Atlanta can interview him right away if Carolina gives them permission.

Brady is easily the least experienced option on the list for Atlanta thus far. Where Bieniemy has been an offensive coordinator for three seasons and spent years on the Chiefs staff, Brady has spent a single year as an offensive coordinator for a rebuilding team. Where Arthur Smith worked his way up through the Titans organization over many years and has put together an excellent offense in Tennessee, Smith presided over the 24th-ranked scoring attack. In fact, Brady has only one year as the hyped passing game coordinator for LSU, two years as an offensive assistant with the Saints, and stints as a graduate assistant at the University of Pennsylvania and linebackers coach at William & Mary to his name. You are not getting someone who has ever run a team or come close to doing so, to be blunt.

What you might get is another Kyle Shanahan, Sean McVay, or Matt LaFleur, if all goes well. Brady earned recognition for the incredible work he did with Joe Burrow and the LSU offense in 2019, when the school won a national championship and Burrow won the Heisman. He parlayed that into a stint in Carolina, where despite Christian McCaffrey barely playing he coaxed a sometimes strong offense out of a rebuilding unit. He’s clearly a bright offensive mind, as Rapoport tweeted, but figuring out whether he can turn into the next successful head coach with that background is tough to know. That offensive acumen would be awfully welcome for an Atlanta team that just trudged through two straight years of empty calorie offense that consistently failed in the red zone.

Personally, the lack of experience and the lack of killer results in Carolina this past year give me significant pause with Brady, a guy I’d much rather be handing an offensive coordinator gig to than a head coaching job. We’ll see if he blows away Atlanta and becomes the next coach of the Falcons, though.