Posts Tagged ‘Falcons’

After the draft, more draft!

Before we take our leave of the 2009 NFL draft, we look ahead to the 2010 edition. Andrew Perloff of SI.com has been kind enough to do a mock for next year and, while it’s way too soon to take such things overly seriously, a mock draft is always fun to scan. And Perloff has the Falcons, who just took a big defensive tackle from the SEC West in Round 1, taking an even bigger one 12 months hence.

He’s Terrence Cody of Alabama, also known as Mount Cody. (He weighs 365 pounds, or thereabouts.) It’s also interesting that Perloff has the Falcons, who drafted 24th overall this time, picking 16th in 2010, which would seem to indicate he foresees some slippage in the 2009 season. Feel free to disagree. But, as you’re griping, take note of these names:

• Sam Bradford, the Heisman holder from Oklahoma, goes No. 1 overall;
• Eric Berry, the Tennessee safety, goes No. 2;
• Tim Tebow, who plays for some school (I forget which) goes 13th;
• Jonathan Dwyer, the Georgia …

Continue reading Bradley’s Buzz: “The Falcons select Terrence Cody” »

Draft grades! Get your draft grades right here!

They’re as much a part of the NFL draft as Chris Berman’s forced jocularity and Mel Kiper’s gelled follicles — the post-draft grades, I mean. And here, without further ado, we go.

On CBSsports.com, Pete Prisco gives the Falcons a B-plus. He likes the Peria Jerry pick — hey, who didn’t? — and thinks defensive end Lawrence Sidbury could be a Round 4 sleeper. Prisco does, however, wonder about the choice of William Moore in Round 2.

Writing for USA Today, Larry Weisman bestows a solid B on the Birds. Weisman applauds the Tony Gonzalez trade, the selections of Jerry and Sidbury but wonders if third-rounder Chris Owens will be any more than a nickel back. And you’ll never guess what grade Clifton Brown of Sporting News Today assesses this Falcons’ draft class. Or how Charles Robinson of Yahoo! Sports rates this crop.

More Prisco? You got it. He called Jerry’s selection “a great pick,” likening him to Warren Sapp, and gave the choice …

Continue reading Bradley’s Buzz: Post-draft grades show B’s for TD the GM »

Say this for the newfangled Falcons: They don’t lie. They tell you what they plan to do, and then they do it. On the day Mike Smith became their coach, he said he wanted to run the ball and to stop the run. Last season his team managed half that. Round 1 of the 2009 draft was the first step toward getting the other half right.

“You want someone who can create double-teams and unblocked situations,” Smith said Saturday, and in Peria – pronounced Per-RAY – Jerry, they believe they’ve found a newer and better and (slightly) sleeker Grady Jackson. And we on the periphery have no reason to doubt them. They’ve gotten pretty good at this talent-identification thing.

Already the Falcons are better than they were when they walked off in the field in Glendale, Ariz. They have a Pro Bowl tight end who will make a good offense better still, and now they have a defensive anchor.

There can be no real quibbles with this pick. (Not even from this observer, who favored Evander Hood for the …

Continue reading The new Falcons: They’re real simple and really smart »

Flowery Branch — A declaration: I wouldn’t have taken Matthew Stafford No. 1 overall. I say this as someone who saw his first collegiate pass (against Western Kentucky) and his last (against Michigan State) and several hundred in between. He’s a great talent, but I don’t think he’ll be a great NFL quarterback.

I thought he was a very good college quarterback, and there’s no doubt he fits the NFL prototype as well as anyone ever has — he’s smart, he’s tall and he has, as the world knows, that big right arm. My reservations have nothing to do with anything physical. My reservations regard attitude.

I see Stafford as a guy who too often tried to get by on the strength of that big arm and who threw too many killing interceptions as a consequence. (See Florida, 2008.) I see a quarterback who wasn’t so much a team leader as a solo act. More to the point, I’ve never seen in Stafford the attention to detail that you get with Peyton Manning or Tom Brady or, yes, Matt Ryan.

Not long ago …

Continue reading Live from Flowery Branch: Stafford, Ziggy and the NFL draft! »

In the way the best quarterbacks see the whole field, Thomas Dimitroff, who’s the son of a quarterback, grasps the big picture. And when have we been able to say that of the man charged with hiring players for the long-suffering Falcons?

At 4:42 p.m. Thursday, someone named Ray posted this on an ajc.com blog: “It sure feels good to know you’ve got one of the best GMs in the game. [It] kind of feels like the Braves’ moves of the ’90s. You always figured JS [John Schuerholz] would make the best moves for the Braves. Now we’ve got that for the Falcons.”

This came barely an hour after the Falcons consummated a trade with Kansas City for the Pro Bowl tight end Tony Gonzalez. At 33, Gonzalez isn’t what he was, but he’s way better than anything the Falcons had. And, by parting only with a Round 2 pick in next year’s draft, Dimitroff has cleared the path to do what he intended all along.

Since the 2008 draft was completed, 2009 had been earmarked for defense. Dimitroff bid adieu to …

Continue reading Thomas Dimitroff: The man with the plan, at long last »