Falcons fire defensive coordinator Jimmy Lake and defensive line coach Jay Rodgers

It’s one-and-done for the embattled coordinator and the team’s defensive line coach.

Jimmy Lake was hired to build on an unexpectedly strong year from the Atlanta Falcons defense in 2023, enabled by significant investments and coordinator Ryan Nielsen. Lake is a familiar face for Raheem Morris and someone he clearly trusted after the two were both on the Rams coaching staff a year ago, but the risk was always that a coach who hadn’t had much success at his stop in Washington in college and had no NFL experience as a coordinator might flame out.

He did. The Falcons went from 18th in points allowed and 11th in yardage last year to 23rd in both metrics this year, shedding 11 sacks (42 to 31) along the way and doubling the number of games where the defense allowed 30 points (3 to 6). Most strikingly, the team went from one of the top three defenses in the league in terms of third down conversions allowed to the second-worst, a failure that kept far too many drives alive in 2024. Lake’s defense had its moments—the game against the Chargers was an all-timer—but with Lake himself crediting Raheem Morris for getting more hands-on coming out of the bye and that coinciding with the team’s improvement, there didn’t appear to be a lot to recommend the coordinator’s work during the 2024 season.

Now the team has fired him and defensive line coach Jay Rodgers, ending a mercifully short tenure, and will start over with Raheem Morris likely to explore a more experienced candidate. There are plenty of names out there—Steve Wilks was around the team at times this year, Jeff Ulbrich could re-unite with former Falcons partner Morris with the Jets staff in flux, Lou Anarumo was just fired by the Bengals, Ryan Nielsen is probably out there again—but it’ll be important for Morris to get the hire right to lift this defense and limit the responsibility he needs to take on for that side of the ball.

The problems for Lake and Rodgers were myriad. The defense did not routinely appear to know what it was doing, with communication errors plaguing them in multiple games (Minnesota, Denver, Carolina the second time), missed tackles being an ever-present problem, and teams finding it easy to exploit matchups they wanted, like Miles Sanders against Matthew Judon in that embarrassing Week 18 effort. While the Falcons defense routinely got better in the second half early in the year, the pass rush was a total zero until Raheem Morris dipped in and the team started getting Kaden Elliss more involved. Lake preached patience and work in his press conferences, but the lack of progress made it particularly difficult to feel good about either.

The team’s investments in and coaching up front did not bear much in the way of fruit, with the team set to go into next year needing to count on Ruke Orhorhoro and Brandon Dorlus and not having a ton of tape to show whether they can step into those major roles. With the defensive line’s regression and a lack of obvious progress for some of their most important young players, it’s no great surprise that Rodgers is also his way out. Lake ultimately oversaw a defense that simply wasn’t good enough, and in press conferences and in games, rarely seemed to have answers for why. Rodgers, meanwhile, simply had a position that he wasn’t able to elevate in any meaningful way, and the Falcons know they need a coach who can get the most out of Orhorhoro, Dorlus, and others heading into 2025.

Lake came to Atlanta after spending a year as the assistant head coach with the Rams, which came after a year off from football following a difficult stretch as the head coach of the Washington Huskies from 2021 to 2022. Rodgers, meanwhile, hopped over from a position as the defensive line coach and run game coordinator for the Chargers in 2022 and 2023; that was a stint that did not go particularly well under Brandon Staley.

Lake will likely be seeking a college position or a position coach role in the NFL, while Rodgers will look to land a defensive line coach position elsewhere. We’ll wish Lake and Rodgers well wherever they land, but the nature of the regression from this defense in 2025 means it’s hard to argue with the team’s decision here. It will all be for naught if the Falcons can’t find hires that can do more to lift the defensive line and the defense more generally, and it is another early knock on Morris and company that they hired two coaches for critical roles who are out a year later.