Former USC head coach Steve Sarkisian hired by Atlanta Falcons

Just days after losing Super Bowl LI, the NFC champion Atlanta Falcons hired former Trojan head coach Steve Sarkisian to take over duties as offensive coordinator. The move comes after the Falcons’ former offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan accepted a head coaching job with the San Francisco 49ers on Monday afternoon.

After spending five years at USC as quarterbacks coach, offensive coordinator and assistant head coach, Sarkisian got his first opportunity as a head coach at Washington in 2009. After Lane Kiffin, the current head coach of Florida Atlantic, was fired on the airport tarmac, Sarkisian left Washington to lead USC in 2013.

Sarkisian’s tenure at USC was one marked by controversy. A promising head coaching career was nearly derailed when Sarkisian showed up intoxicated to several functions.

After being fired in the middle of the 2015 season, Sarkisian had a stint as a television analyst to stay involved in the game, and he got another opportunity when he joined another former USC head coach in Kiffin at perennial powerhouse Alabama, taking a job as an offensive consultant. Sarkisian was then thrust into the role of offensive coordinator in the 2017 National Championship when Kiffin was dismissed a week before the season’s end.

Sarkisian will now go from the NCAA’s runner-up to the NFL’s. He steps into a seemingly ideal scenario for a promotion to the NFL: With MVP Matt Ryan at quarterback and an elite wide receiver in Julio Jones, Sarkisian has a bevy of weapons to work with.

Falcons head coach Dan Quinn previously worked under Pete Carroll with the Seattle Seahawks, serving as the defensive coordinator during Seattle’s Super Bowl-winning season, and Quinn now brings in Sarkisian to run the offense while he oversees everything else. Entering his first year in the NFL since he was a quarterbacks coach for the Oakland Raiders in 2004, Sarkisian will look to replicate the success that Shanahan had with the Falcons’ offense this season.