Things are not going very well for the Atlanta Falcons. A team that narrowly lost to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and beat the Minnesota Vikings in primetime just got stomped 30-0 by the Carolina Panthers, and there’s some panic setting in as the Falcons move Zac Robinson to the sidelines, work out kickers, and now fire a position coach.
That would be Ike Hilliard, the team’s wide receivers coach since last year. You’ll note it’s the same Hilliard who was receivers coach in 2024, when Drake London surpassed
1,000 yards, Darnell Mooney nearly did, and Ray-Ray McCloud had a career year. That’s a deeply surprising reversal of fortune three games into the 2025 season; if you were inclined to accuse the team of scapegoating a coach, I would be inclined to nod thoughtfully.
Per The Athletic’s Josh Kendall, a Falcons source characterized the firing as performance-based, likely tied to the concerning lack of quality play and in-sync play for this receiving group thus far in 2025. Drops and odd routes have plagued this corps thus far in three games, and while injury has also been a significant factor, you’d be hard-pressed to argue that the receivers have looked great.
I don’t really know what to make of this, though. Hilliard was a respected (and pretty good!) receiver in the NFL for a long time, including a stint in Tampa Bay where he overlapped with then-head coach Raheem Morris. Hilliard has been a receivers coach either in college or in the pros since 2009, mostly in one-to-two year stints with the notable exception of a 2014-2019 run with Washington. I doubt he’ll be without work for very long, even if he has to catch on as an assistant or consultant for the rest of the 2025 season, and maybe especially because of the work he did a year ago with a group that put up career years more or less across the board. We’ll wish him well wherever he ends up.
For the Falcons, this is about trying to address one small slice of a major problem. The offense has looked out of sorts and poor throughout much of the first three games, with the notable exception of whatever Bijan Robinson is asked to do. The Falcons can’t and won’t make sweeping changes three games into a season at 1-2, but they apparently felt that Hilliard’s coaching was enough of a problem that it warranted firing him and turning the receiver group back over to T.J. Yates, the team’s passing game coordinator and former wide receivers coach from 2022-2023. I’m sure Yates has a good rapport with London after coaching him early in his career, but it’s anyone’s guess as to whether he can incorporate these duties into his day-to-day and coax more out of this receiver group. I would not say the passing game coordination is going particularly well at the moment, either, though it’s hard to know how much of that to lay at Yates’ feet.
Again, I don’t believe receiver is the team’s biggest problem; Michael Penix Jr. has looked uncertain and off-balance at times, especially against Carolina, and the team has had trouble stringing plays together and maybe especially scoring for reasons that go beyond “that guy ran the wrong route,” though that certainly doesn’t help. The move to get Robinson down to the sideline is supposed to help with that, as is the shift from Hilliard to Yates for the receivers. I’m going to go ahead and withhold any judgement on the wisdom of those moves until we actually see some improvement from an offense that badly needs it, but I’m dubious this is going to lead to a quick, sudden turnaround for the receivers.
