Atlanta adds two new coaches to the staff.
The Atlanta Falcons have filled a vacancy on their defensive coaching staff and added a new position in one fell swoop, announcing Friday that they’ve hired former Texans assistant defensive line coach Nate Ollie as their defensive line coach and adding former Jets linebackers coach Mike Rutenberg as their defensive pass game coordinator.
The hire of Ollie is one I’m quite excited about. As I wrote earlier this month when the Falcons were set to interview Ollie, he’s a coach who has either been assistant or full-fledged defensive line coach for some very productive pass rushing defensive lines in Houston, Indianapolis, New York (Jets), and Philadelphia. The Colts defensive line took an absolute nosedive last year in terms of sacks after letting Ollie walk, something you can’t entirely say was due to the coach but does help illustrate the caliber of work he does. That and his brief overlap with new defensive coordinator Jeff Ulbrich in 2021 help explain why the Falcons hired him, and now Ollie will be tasked with getting much more out of a defensive line that has young players with promise, aging veterans who had down years in 2024, and likely multiple new additions.
Rutenberg is more of a familiar hire for Ulbrich, as he spent the past four seasons with him in New York. The linebackers coach during that stretch, Rutenberg also has a history as a defensive passing game specialist (with the 49ers in 2020) and as a defensive backs coach (with the Jaguars before that). Ulbrich will lean on him to help plan for opposing passing attacks as someone he knows and trusts, as well as someone who helped develop and/or coax more out of a talented group of Jets linebackers. The defensive passing game coordinator was a position the Falcons did not have on staff in 2024.
Give both coaches a warm welcome, and hope they can be part of a renewed and rejuvenated Falcons defense in 2025.