The Atlanta Falcons will retain Dan Quinn as head coach and Thomas Dimitroff as general manager for the 2020 season.

The Falcons began the season 1-7, but are 5-2 over the past seven games and have defeated the San Francisco 49ers and New Orleans Saints on the road.

The Falcons announced Friday that Raheem Morris will be the team's defensive coordinator starting next year.

"You have to pick apart the word 'continuity.' Continuity for the sake of continuity is not necessarily a good thing. It depends on what you want to continue,'' Blank said in a video posted by the team. "In our case, we studied really hard the performance of the team during this year. Obviously the first half of the year, 1-7, not where we wanted to be. Horrific by any standard.

"But you look at the second half of the year, we're 5-2. The question really is for me, were the improvements that were made, were they significant enough and did they show enough of a trend line that I feel that there's reason to believe we can carry that kind of record and that kind of performance over to the year 2020?

"And my answer is 'yes' because essentially the players, we didn't come up with Superman the second half of the year. Same number of players, same quality of players, same individuals who were playing just as hard in the first half as the second half. But we put them in better positions to win."