McKay gets extension

Jason Cole of Yahoo! Sports reports that the Falcons have extended the contract of current president and GM Rich McKay by two years. McKay's contract ran through at least 2008, and so with the extension he is now under contract through at least 2010. McKay's future with the team was tenuous due to the team's search for a replacement general manager. Owner Arthur Blank however indicated last month that McKay was asked to stay on as team president, but would be stripped of his general manager duties. It was undetermined if McKay would stay on in a lesser role, but this extension clearly indicates that he will.

McKay has been travelling with Blank during his this week for all the interviews with prospective general manager and head coaching candidates, indicating that he does still retain at least a small bit of influence in the matter.

Parcells denies Falcons

Updating previous reports, Bill Parcells has reportedly denied the job offer from the Atlanta Falcons to join the club to oversee football operations. Reportedly, Parcells is re-considering a revised offer from the Miami Dolphins. Falcons owner Arthur Blank released a statement earlier today to address the Parcells issue:

"Late last night it was revealed to the media by a source outside the Falcons that we were close to reaching an agreement with Bill Parcells to lead the club’s football operations."

Prior to the information becoming public, we had reached an agreement in principle with Parcells, and we met with him this morning to complete the contract. At that time, we were made aware by Parcells that he was considering a revised offer from the Miami Dolphins. He later informed us that he would not be signing a contract with us."

We remain committed to looking at every option for building a championship-caliber team for our fans. I have stated we will leave no stone unturned in doing so, and this effort is one example of that. We gave it our best shot, and it didn’t work out."

We will continue down the same overall path, proceeding with plans to hire a general manager and a head coach. We will identify and consider every strongly viable candidate for these positions, with the goal of hiring the best. Rich McKay remains President of the club and will retain general manager responsibilities until a new GM is hired."

We will be making no further comment on the Parcells matter."

ESPN's Chris Mortensen reported on NFL Live today that he expects that Rich McKay will not return to the Falcons after the season. Reportedly, McKay will be given the opportunity to remain with the club as President, but Mortensen expects McKay to turn down that opportunity.

Falcons close to hiring Parcells

Gary Myers of the New York Daily News reports that Bill Parcells is close to accepting an offer to oversee the football operations of the Atlanta Falcons. Per Myers, a deal could be finalized by the end of the day today. But Parcells indicated that he has no plans to be the Falcons next head coach. In his new position, Parcells is expected to hire a new general manager and head coach. Parcells will essentially be taking over the position of football operations from President and GM Rich McKay. However, Parcells indicated that McKay is welcome to stay on with the franchise to handle league business. It is unknown if McKay does plan to stay with the franchise as this move seems to basically strip of his influence over personnel decisions.

Parcells currently works as an analyst for ESPN, after four seasons recently with the Dallas Cowboys as head coach. Parcells has coached in the NFL for 19 seasons with four different teams. In previous areas, he has served both as coach and oversaw a lot of personnel decisions, but has only worked solely in the personnel department once. That came in 2000 with the New York Jets, when Al Groh was the team's head coach. That year with the Jets, Parcells managed to stockpile four first round draft picks. One of those picks was current Falcon defensive John Abraham. He was able to acquire some of those picks in trading wide receiver Keyshawn Johnson to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, then managed by Rich McKay. Parcells was once pursued by the Buccaneers for their head coach position following the 2001 season, but denied them.

McKay addresses incident with Vick

Falcons GM and president Rich McKay held a press conference today in order to officially address the recent off-field incident that Michael Vick had in a Miami airport.

McKay stressed the disappointment the organization has in the circumstances surrounding the incident, as well as Vick's own disappointment to the organization and notably the fans.

McKay indicated that the Falcons will deal with Vick internally, but added they are not looking to punish him separately from anything that the league hands down. The team is also prepared to let the legal side of the matter play itself out.

Vick has had little history of "off-field" incidents throughout his career as a Falcon. The biggest black eye prior to the events in Miami, was when he made an obscene gesture to fans following a home loss to the New Orleans Saints. Vick was fined $10,000 by he league, and also instructed to donate an addition $10,000 to charity.