Joined right now by the owner and chairman of the
Atlanta Falcons, Arthur Blank M Blake. Thank you
very much for being here. You've got an exciting
, exciting, uh few weeks here, you got
a very expensive quarterback who's gonna be taking a lot
of your money and hopefully provide you a lot of
win here. Uh Well, we had a great
, uh great free agency. Um I think we
accomplished what we wanted to. Um We had some
very specific goals during free agency that we wanted to
get through and I think we were able to do
that. Um, obviously draft coming up, we'll
fill some more holes and um we had a young
competitive team this last year, but, uh you
know, there's some things we had to do to
get over that hump and I think we put our
position ourselves in a position to do that. Obviously
, it's a competitive division, the competitive league every
Sunday, you gotta be your best. So,
uh um we're happy about where we are, but
we're looking forward to our schedule, looking forward to
playing games. So I don't think it was a
secret that you guys were gonna go after Kirk Cousins
. I feel like everybody knew that. When did
you, how did this transpire from your perspective?
And when did you know, like, ok,
I think we might have this guy. Well,
I think, you know, we were debating,
I mean, we knew when we said this,
uh, postseason immediately postseason that a quarterback play had
to get better, uh, coming into this coming
current season. And, uh, there was a
number of ways we could fill that and, uh
, still awesome combinations that we consider. Um,
but Kirk obviously has had an excellent career in the
NFL 12 years, 226, year runs with two
, very good franchises and won a lot of games
and we thought in terms of free agency, he
was the best answer for us. Um, I
think that, uh, our general manager continued to
work with, uh, folks at Minnesota and,
uh, the agent I should say and, um
, for, for KK. And, um,
I think as we got down to the last couple
of days, it became clear that it was going
to be very competitive and that, um, you
know, we, we wanted to have a positive
solution for this issue, this problem that we had
this hole that we had without a, without a
, uh, a playmaker in that position. It's
hard to win in this league. It's tough to
win under any circumstances, but particularly without, you
know, uh, a really qualified quarterback and we
think we got one to Kirk and, uh,
you know, we made a big investment, but
we're happy to do that. We're about championships about
winning. And, um, and that's our,
you know, that's our responsibility through our fan base
for a guy like Kirk at this point in his
career. You, you want to hit the ground
running, right? He's, I mean, he's
in the prime of his career right now and I'm
just watching him when he was at his press conference
and some of the behind the scenes footage, I'm
watching him. I said it looks like he's been
there forever and it was his first day in the
facility. Did you get that, that vibe with
him? Well, I think, uh I think
he feels very comfortable. I mean, I think
he's uh he's a very, very mature young man
. Uh I didn't know him before I watched his
press conference. I was out of town when he
did it, but um I was very impressed with
the way he responds to the questions. He was
very thorough, very thoughtful, um answered every question
um has been great in terms of connections to our
staff and uh uh been connected to uh probably all
of our players by now and, and uh ready
to come in and get to work and uh uh
from a medical standpoint, he feels good. His
achilles is behind him. Uh He's got some healing
yet to do, but he's in a good place
with that. Um, and looking forward to,
um, you know, to getting on the field
, he understands that the NFL is about winning and
, um, as we all do and he understands
the challenge of that, but he's, uh,
he's got a great coaching staff to work with.
We're thrill with Raheem and, and, uh,
coordinators. I was kidding, uh, Stan Kroenke
and Sean mcveigh and less need. We got half
their staff who is now living in Atlanta now.
But, um, but I said to Sean,
listen, you're from Atlanta, that can't be bad
, but that really to their credit. Then I
will say this, uh, said this to them
, privately said publicly is that Sean has developed really
his own train of sense. I mean, the
fact that some of the coaches are coming out of
, uh, out of that situation with the Rams
is speaks well to him, speaks well to Les
, speaks well for Stan as an owner. So
, um, we've got an excellent coaching staff now
, some of which we've retained some which we brought
from a variety of other teams. So we're in
a good place and ready to play ball. Arthur
. Last thing for you. We appreciate your time
here. I remember interview you backstage before the Super
Bowl that week back after the 2015 season, we
all know how that game ended as an owner to
come that close to have the changes you've had since
how much does it burn inside you every day to
get another opportunity to hoist the Lombardi trophy? Well
, I don't know, I don't know that it
burns inside of me every single day. Every moment
. It would be, you know, a good
sound bite. But, I mean, it does
, you know, I mean, I feel like
my responsibility as an owner to our fans, um
, to the players, to the coaches is to
make sure we're as competitive as we can be every
single year. Uh, to make sure that we
have an opportunity to, uh, to get into
the tournament to get into the playoffs. We understand
a single game elimination. Anything can happen. Uh
, we'd love to get back to the Super Bowl
and have a chance to win. Uh, and
it really went for, uh, f for fan
base that's been, uh, supportive of Atlanta since
1966 and it's a great fan base and, uh
, they fill up Mercedes Benz Stadium beautifully for us
, uh, for football and for soccer as well
and for virtually every other event we have there.
But, uh, uh, so I'm, I'm
anxious to do that, but we got to take
it one step at a time and we gotta get
, get ourselves in a position where we can,
uh, where we're competing for that. And,
uh, and I think we're in a position now
. We're definitely a more competitive team. We were
a year ago. Arthur, thanks. So much
for the time. Thank you. Thank you.