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Bobby Petrino to resign?


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From ESPN.com

[quote][b]Sources: Petrino leaving NFL for Arkansas job[/b]
Updated: December 11, 2007, 6:06 PM ET

Bobby Petrino will resign his position as coach of the Atlanta Falcons and is close to an agreement to become the new coach at the University of Arkansas, multiple sources tell ESPN.[/quote]
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[quote][size=5][b]Petrino reportedly phones in resignation to Falcons[/b][/size]
ESPN.com news services

Updated: December 11, 2007, 7:33 PM ET


Bobby Petrino abruptly resigned his position as coach of the Atlanta Falcons on Tuesday, and multiple sources told ESPN he is negotiating an agreement to become the new coach at Arkansas.



Petrino and his agent had been talking with the Falcons about his preference to return to the college ranks. The former Louisville coach was looking for an opportunity to break into the Southeastern Conference ranks, and Arkansas was a natural fit.


Citing the team as its source, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported on its Web site that Petrino phoned the Falcons about 5:45 p.m. Tuesday and resigned. Petrino and the team agreed he would not coach the Falcons' remaining three games, a source told ESPN.com's John Clayton.

The Falcons said they will discuss Petrino's decision at a 2 p.m. ET news conference on Wednesday with owner Arthur Blank and general manager Rich McKay.

Petrino and Arkansas do not have a deal, the sources told ESPN, but once one is in place, Petrino is expected to be paid around $3 million a year to succeed Houston Nutt, who resigned after a tumultuous season and hours later took the Mississippi job.

Bobby Petrino lost 10 of his 13 games as an NFL coach. He lost only 9 of 50 games in four seasons at Louisville.

Petrino had a five-year, $24 million contract with the Falcons -- NFL sources said there is no buyout in the deal -- so he will be taking a pay cut to coach the Razorbacks.


The Falcons are 3-10, their season torn apart by Michael Vick's involvement in a dogfighting ring and subsequent 23-month jail sentence, which was levied Monday. After losing Vick, Petrino tried three other starting quarterbacks without success.

The Falcons are assured of the 32nd losing season in their 42-year history. Petrino's resignation is another jarring blow to a team that dealt with Vick's legal troubles since the first day of training camp, when a plane flew overhead pulling a sign that said: "New Team Name? Dog Killers?"

Petrino assembled one of college football's highest-scoring offenses at Louisville, but the Falcons were anemic without Vick. They also were plagued by injuries on the offensive line, which forced them to start two players who weren't even drafted out of college.

Just hours after Vick's sentencing in Richmond, Va., Atlanta took its fourth straight double-digit loss, 34-14 to the New Orleans Saints on "Monday Night Football".

The resignation had to be a major surprise to Blank, who fired Jim Mora just two seasons after he led the Falcons to the NFC championship game, and lured Petrino with a lucrative contract.

Before Monday's game, Blank said he felt better than ever about his decision to hire Petrino given all the adversity the team faced this season.

"I feel real fortunate we have a terrific guy leading our team, our CEO, in Bobby Petrino," Blank said. "I think he's proven to me he's a better head coach than we thought he was going to be, dealing with a set of cards we didn't see unfold this year, which probably never in the history of the NFL has anything like this happened. Bobby has done a wonderful job dealing with all of these issues. He's kept the players focused."

But there were signs of dissension, especially in the way Petrino dealt with his players.

He ran the team with an aloof style, feeling no reason to share his decisions on personnel with the affected players. He could walk through the locker room without speaking to anyone and was openly criticized by two of the team's stars, Pro Bowlers Alge Crumpler and DeAngelo Hall.

Petrino drew the ire of the veterans with his decision to cut nose tackle Grady Jackson, one of the team's most productive defensive linemen, during the bye week. Quarterback Joey Harrington was clearly perturbed a few weeks ago when, after leading the Falcons to two straight wins, he heard from the media that Petrino still considered injury prone Byron Leftwich the starter.

Against the Saints, the Falcons made another change at the most crucial offensive position, giving Chris Redman his first start since 2002. While Redman threw for 298 yards and two touchdowns, the Falcons lost again.

They have been outscored by an average of 18.5 points in their last four defeats.

After the latest loss, Petrino sounded as though he was still committed to getting the Falcons turned around.

"We'll come back on Wednesday to take a look at it, and then we'll get back to work," he said. "We have to find something to rally around."

But clearly, Petrino already had decided to abandon the sinking ship.[/quote]



[url="http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/news/story?id=3150783"]http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/news/story?id=3150783[/url]
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Bobby Petrino has resigned as the head coach of the Falcons to accept the HC job at Arkansas.
Damn only 13 games into it.. The Vick situation didnt help plus the fact that the players have given him hell since being there for various reasons.
Hue Jackson is a prime candidate for the HC job along with the DC...
Pro teams should never hire college coaches.. totally different
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Emmitt Thomas, interim Falcons coach


[url="http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=3151710&campaign=rss&source=ESPNHeadlines"]http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?i...e=ESPNHeadlines[/url]



[quote]ATLANTA -- Longtime assistant coach and former player Emmitt Thomas, who has served as the Atlanta Falcons' secondary coach since 2002, has been named interim head coach for the final three games of the season.



It is believed that Falcons executives, who huddled for several hours Tuesday night in the wake of the resignation of coach Bobby Petrino, also considered offensive coordinator Hue Jackson and defensive coordinator Mike Zimmer for the position.



Thomas, 64, has never been a head coach in the league, although he has interviewed several times for head coach vacancies.



Thomas played 13 seasons in the league as a standout defensive back with the Kansas City Chiefs (1966-78), before moving into the coaching ranks.



His first job in the NFL was with the St. Louis Cardinals (1981-85), and he also served stints with Washington (1986-94), Philadelphia (1995-98), Green Bay (1999) and Minnesota (2000-2001), before joining Dan Reeves' staff in Atlanta in 2002. He was a defensive coordinator with the Eagles, Packers and Vikings.



As a player, Thomas appeared in 181 games, including Super Bowl I and Super Bowl IV, and five Pro Bowls.



Thomas becomes the seventh interim head coach in the 41-year history of the Falcons, and the 59th in-season replacement in the league since the 1970 NFL-AFL merger. He faces a difficult task in trying to elicit a respectable effort from a 3-10 team that has now lost both Michael Vick and its head coach in the same season.



Interim coaches in the NFL historically don't fare very well.



The cumulative record of the in-season replacement coaches since the merger is just 119-261-1. That's an anemic winning percentage of .314, not much better than the success rate of the coaches that the replacement guys supplanted. Of the 58 previous in-season replacement coaches since 1970, only 10 have posted winning records, and that includes four who coached three or fewer games.



Len Pasquarelli is a senior NFL writer for ESPN.com.[/quote]
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even though he was handed a pile of shit this season Petrino should not have left the way he did, that was cowardly
he and nick saban have lost my respect "oh i'm commited to this football team" a few days later he packs up what a lying sack of shit

man you have to feel bad fot arthur blank it must really suck to be let down twice in the same season ( vick, petrino) by the two guys who are most important to your team

just for thought, i wish blank could become the bengals owner
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[quote name='akiliMVP' post='607663' date='Dec 11 2007, 08:24 PM']Hopefully Brat will go there next season!

It probably will be Hue though for the interim.[/quote]


[quote name='IKOTA' post='607672' date='Dec 11 2007, 09:05 PM']One can only hope -_-[/quote]


i know!!!


why would he call the palmer throw and interception play 4 TIMES in the cardinals game????

thats just poor OC-ing right there...

and i swear if he calls the no one block for the running backs play one more fucking time..... *shakes fist*

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The most hilarious and ironic part of Petrino leaving is that he literally left in the middle of the night. But he was well known to be a snake-in-the-grass while at Louisville, always telling people they should trust him and his commitment while actively seeking out nearly every job opening that came up, and some that didn't (Auburn).
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