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As of Thursday, Feb. 12, this little blog has relocated to a new home on AJC.com. It’s the same newspaper, the same Web site and the same writer (feel free to groan) — there’s just a new URL.
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Home > Mark Bradley > Archives > 2008 > April > 27
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Believe in Dimitroff, believe in this draft
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Flowery Branch — It comes down to this: Do you believe in the guy doing the picking? If you do, you’re willing to extend the benefit of any and all doubt.
I believe in Thomas Dimitroff.
I believe he’s as smart as anyone who has ever worked for the Falcons.
Ergo, I believe in this draft.
I believe in Matt Ryan partly because I’ve seen him play with my own eyes, but mostly because Dimitroff believes in him. I believe in Sam Baker and Curtis Lofton and Harry Douglas and the rest for the same reason. You could call it blind faith. (You could, if you were of a cynical bent, call it rank naivete.) I prefer to think of it as faith born of observation.
Dimitroff has a scout’s eye — he spoke Sunday of Douglas’ “ability to stick his foot in the dirt and separate” and cornerback Chevis Jackson’s “ability to get his hands on balls” — but isn’t some data geek who sees nothing beyond 40 times. He grasps the bigger picture. He has what he described as “a clear vision” of what the Falcons could and should be, and that vision is this:
“A team that’s very focused, very passionate and hard-working. A team that perseveres. A team that believes in itself.”
If that sounds nebulous, consider what Dimitroff did and didn’t do in his first draft: He didn’t bow to public pressure and pick Glenn Dorsey in Round 1, and he didn’t hew to conventional wisdom by loading up on offensive linemen thereafter. (Of the Falcons’ 11 picks, only Sam Baker is an offensive lineman.) He didn’t take guys who might have looked good on paper and who would have fluffed up the Monday morning draft grades.
He took guys for a specific reason: “We would not have selected a player who we didn’t feel was a fit. … There might be a time when it’s right to go against the grain, but at this point we’re not at that spot.”
Dimitroff can justify each of the 11 choices, and his reasoning is varied and fascinating, but in the end it was always the same: We think this guy can help us do what it is we want to do, which is run the ball and stop the run and win on special teams and not beat ourselves. No, that’s not very sexy, but how pretty were the New York Giants in beating New England?
“I don’t want it to be a haphazard approach,” Dimitroff said, speaking of the draft but not just of the draft. “We want to develop a plan and a style of how we want to play.”
Matt Ryan fits that plan, which isn’t to say that Glenn Dorsey wouldn’t have. But Ryan was, Dimitroff said, the Falcons’ pick for these reasons: “A., the value of the position; B., our need, and C., the skills and the requisite traits. That was the tipping point.”
You can quibble with the pick, but you can’t argue against the logic. Quarterback is the most important position, and the Falcons, as we saw last season, need a quarterback in the worst way. Ryan mightn’t be Peyton Manning, but he’s too smart and too driven to be a bust. Indeed, when Mike Smith asked how he’d feel about serving the customary first-year quarterback’s apprenticeship, Ryan told the Falcons’ coach: “I want to be the starter.” And that, Smith said, “is the right answer.”
We won’t know for a while if the Falcons had the answers in the 2008 draft. Time is the ultimate judge. But we can say this much already: Nothing they did over the weekend was done without forethought. Nobody was drafted on a whim. Nobody was drafted who won’t fit what the new architect has in mind, and the new architect is a keeper.
Permalink | Comments (106) | Categories: Falcons/NFL
Rumble helps halt stumble
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Desperate for anything that would pass as inspiration, the Hawks, a team never confused with the NBA’s greatest, turned to The Greatest. The rookie Al Horford called Florida for help, and the Gators’ video man sent a DVD via overnight mail.
Ali-Foreman. The Rumble in the Jungle. The birth of the rope-a-dope. The utter culmination of the Ali Legend.
He screened the famous fight — actually, an abridged version of the documentary “When We Were Kings” — for teammates after Saturday’s shootaround. And 11 hours later, the Hawks an improbably emphatic Game 3 winner, the master motivator spoke of his ploy.
“I felt I’d be cheating my team if I didn’t do it,” Horford said. “If you watch that film and don’t get pumped up, there’s something wrong with you.”
For one giddy evening, there was nothing at all wrong with the Atlanta Hawks. They didn’t just beat the snooty Celtics; they handled them. They led by six points after the first quarter, by 10 after the third, by 15 with seven minutes left, by nine at the end. There will be no sweep. There will be a Game 5 back in Boston. This presumed rout might just turn into a series after all.
“I’m sure the Celtics thought we thought the series was over,” said Josh Smith, who rather obviously did not. He had the best game any player on either side has managed in this series: scoring 27 points, taking nine rebounds, making six assists, dunking four times and even nailing three treys.
The team that was believed to have few fans and no chance turned out to have more than a little of both. The expected invasion of Philips Arena by Celtics fans — the Green People, as Mike Fratello used to call them — never fully occurred. Green People were a distinct and mute minority. And the building itself, often as lively as a crypt, was positively frothing.
“Coming out of the tunnel, I haven’t seen a crowd that electric since I’ve been here,” said Joe Johnson, who scored 23 points and who made six assists.
Games 1 and 2 had tracked the same course. The Celtics got ahead and stayed there. The Celtics guarded the Hawks, and the Hawks offered no counter. This time the Hawks, who had made only 10 assists Wednesday night, made 28 on 36 baskets, an astonishing ratio. Mike Bibby steered his team the way a big-time point guard should, and the same team that Mike Woodson labeled “selfish” after Game 2 turned into the passing-est bunch since Air Coryell.
And this time the No. 1 seed was stumped for a response. Paul Pierce and Ray Allen missed 17 of 27 shots between them and looked noticeably older and slower than the Hawks they were trying to chase. It might have been a one-night aberration, but there was nothing fluky about the way they won.
Tied at 68 with 6:15 left in the third quarter, the Hawks limited Boston to one basket and four points over the next 8 1/2 minutes. By then it was 89-74, Smith having stretched the lead to 15 with a 3-pointer off Johnson’s feed. Three minutes later he would supply the killshot, another trey off a Johnson pass. And a night that had promised so little turned into a full-blown celebration: The first NBA playoff game in Philips had been won by the suddenly poised and powerful home side.
Afterward, the whiteboard in the Hawks’ locker room bore three words: “Don’t Be Satisfied.” And that could be an issue: The series has been joined, but will the elated underdogs see winning once as a place to stop?
“You have to celebrate, and a lot of us are,” Horford said. “It’s our first time. But we have to go back to work tomorrow.”
And what will be the next inspirational fistic video? Louis-Schmeling? Douglas-Tyson? “I’ll have to think about that,” said Horford, and then he smiled.
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