After racing to the number one seed in the NFC, you can understand the disappointment at the blowout defeat to Green Bay.
But it doesn’t mean the Falcons don’t have one of the most solid squads in the NFL. It just means the Green Bay Packers were that good on the day (and for most of the days in the 2010 NFL season.) In fact, when you’re looking at team needs with Atlanta, it would be easy to scream that the Falcons just pick up the best player available.
The problem is, as the Green Bay game showed, the Falcons need to get better. Against the better teams they just lack a bit of top end talent that allows them to compete with an elite team on song. Furthermore, two of their star players (Tony Gonzalez and John Abraham) are getting older and closer to retirement. It makes looking at where the Falcons go from here a very interesting dilemma.
Offensive Line
It’s not a sexy choice, but it is one that could make the Atlanta Falcons an immediately better team. There are two rationales for this selection, and we’ll start with the big one: Sam Baker just isn’t very good. He’s had three years to get better and shows no signs of doing so. To put things in perspective, Duane Brown (selected after Baker in 2008) was our fifth lowest ranked tackle as a rookie and improved to 17th overall by 2010. Baker? Well, his rankings for three years in the league are 44th (2008), 54th (2009) and 74th (2010) of all tackles who played 25% of their teams snaps.
The problem with Baker is that for all the good games he puts forward, he very rarely dominates a pass rusher and is always prone to getting beat. More so, he’s just not an imposing player in the run game, with only Jermon Bushrod finishing with a lower rating.
Another problem the Falcons face is with the rest of their line being close to retirement (Todd McClure) or primed to hit free agency (everyone else). You may feel you’ve drafted two of these replacements in Joe Hawley and Mike Johnson, but that leaves a third spot still to be filled if you can’t resign players who are likely to be overvalued in free agency. A dilemma for sure, but one the Falcons would be wise to address.
Defensive End
Recently we declared Kroy Biermann our Secret Superstar for the Atlanta Falcons, after already declaring him someone who could break out in 2011. That said, there’s still a number of factors that make defensive end a spot the Falcons could go.
Our ratings paint a pretty good picture of the Falcons’ defensive ends. Biermann and John Abraham get to the passer, while Chauncey Davis and especially Jamaal Anderson are excellent in the run game. But Abraham is getting older. He’ll be 33 before a new season (possibly) starts and so the Falcons could do with finding someone to groom to replace him. Looking at the Giants’ model of never having enough pass rushers, the Falcons could find their own Jason Pierre Paul type player and find a situational and backup role for him to grow before he’s ready to take over when Abraham moves on.
But that would suggest Abraham is a spent force. And there was nothing about his play this year that suggested he was close to being such. Additionally, Atlanta still has Lawrence Sidbury on the roster, and management doesn’t appear to have given up on him. Though the draft may be too deep to resist defensive end talent, there’s an argument for the Falcons already having the talent on their roster at defensive end. Instead it could be better served investing in other positions with a more immediate return in mind.
Tight End
He’s not the athlete he once was, but you can still rely on Tony Gonzalez to produce. 2011 could very well be his last season though, and the lack of depth the Falcons have behind him is scary. Justin Peelle is a decent run blocker but he’s not going to cause alarm when he runs a pass route. The other tight end on the roster, Michael Palmer, has 126 NFL snaps to his name and while he played serviceably, it would be a bold move to declare him the future at the spot.
So the Falcons need to find someone to replace Tony Gonzalez long term, but looking around, is there that guy? It seems an especially weak class for tight ends, and Atlanta is likely to want an all around package. Players like Jason Witten and Zach Miller have fallen past the top rounds, so the Falcons could be better off targeting this spot later on.
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