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Monday, January 14, 2008
GM hiring playing well online
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Editor’s note: Our D. Orlando Ledbetter will be surfing Websites daily to catch up on the latest buzz on team owner Arthur Blank’s search for a general manager and head coach. Look for his posting around 1 p.m. Monday-Friday. If you have a Website you think he should check out, send it to him at dledbetter@ajc.com.
The hiring of Tom Dimitroff as the Falcons new general manager is playing well in cyberspace.
It was noted by the Trenton Times that Dimitroff beat out Tom Heckert, the only candidate interviewed who had previous general manager experience.
But the local fans are embracing the move. On the fansite TheFalcoholic.com , they were trying to project who Dimitroff would take with his first Falcons pick based on his top New England picks.
They concluded he’d skip on the quarterbacks and take an offensive lineman. They expect him to pickup lineman throughout, a safety and a kicker.
Dimitroff even got the blessing of New England coach Bill Belichick in a CBSSportsline.com article on his hiring.
“Tom’s done a good job for us,” Belichick said. “I’ve known him a long time, since I was in Cleveland.”
(No mention of if Dimitroff had any knowledge of the spygate incident.)
There’s one little troublesome point that must be addressed. One of Dimitroff’s pick was Miami’s Brandon Merriweather. He was involved in the nasty brawl with Florida International in 2006. Merriweather was caught on tape repeatedly kicking a downed FAU player. With the Falcons in the past stressing character, will the new guy pick talent over character? Merriweather was off of several team’s draft boards last season.
Some of his other top picks include, cornerback Asante Samuel, offensive linemen Logan Mankins and Dan Koppen, running back Laurence Maroney, tight end Ben Watson and defensive linemen Ty Warren.
On Profootballtalk.com, they couldn’t believe the Falcons hired Dimitroff without a face-to-face interview.
“It’s amazing,” PFT.com wrote. “After hauling a nine-person committee all over the country to interview candidates for head coach and G.M., the guy who got the most important job in the business has never met the owner.”
On SportingNews.com, most of the comments were favorable and one fan wonder if the Dimitroff was bringing some of the New England scouts with him and if this was a way for the Falcons to get Josh McDaniels to reconsider interviewing for the head coaching job.
So did the Falcons get the right guy? Would you’d like to have seen Heckert, or one of the Green Bay execs, Reggie McKenzie or John Schneider? Should they have gone with an experienced general manager, who has a track record of building a team and has functioned in the job before?
Dimitroff era underway
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Newly hired GM Thomas Dimitroff arrived in Atlanta Monday to begin trudging through the multitude of tasks to try to fix the Falcons.
There won’t be any media availability until Tuesday so you might not hear much from him until then.
Dimitroff will spend the day getting a lay of the land and meeting some of the people in the organization. He hadn’t done that in person yet since he interviewed with team owner Arthur Blank and president Rich McKay via satellite. Though that might sound crazy to some people, a lot of business deals, hirings and firings don’t always take place in face-to-face meetings. It all depends on how comfortable the people involved - especially the one signing the checks - feels about handling matters in such ways.
Dimitroff’s first task will be hiring a coach. The common thinking is that since he is relatively young, 40, he likely would hire a younger coach to grow with him in this rebuilding process. No one knows if anyone the Falcons have already interviewed - Dallas offensive coordinator Jason Garrett, Tennessee defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz, Colts assistant head coach Jim Caldwell - are on his radar.
It will be easy to figure out that if there is little action regarding the coaching search this week that Dimitroff’s main target is still coaching in the playoffs.
Dimitroff will have significant, if not total input on hiring a head coach. Such decisions rarely, if at all, are made unilaterally, so Blank, McKay and others likely will give their opinions on coaching candidates. A good thing for Dimitroff is he’s also coming from outside of the organization, where he can comfortably accumulate opinions from other league officials about potential coaches.
As for McKay, he will not have final say on football issues. Dimitroff will hold the swing vote if his staff is tied on some decisions. Then, he will bring things to McKay and Blank for final approval. Blank, of course, has ultimate say and veto power.
McKay’s pride could be hurt since he was removed from football-making decisions, but he is a survivor who will do what Blank asks him to do. He is not the type to meddle or to try and sabotage things to make himself look better. If Blank thought he was, he wouldn’t have offered McKay a 17-month contract extension that runs through 2010.
Dimitroff, meanwhile, must hire a staff he feels comfortable with and a staff with experience in pro personnel to help with free agency and trades. Dimitroff’s expertise lies in college talent evaluation and he hasn’t been involved in a lot of trades, salary-cap decisions and things of that nature so he is going to need some help.
There are several people already employed by the Falcons who are very capable but he might want to hire some people he is aligned with to support him when tough decisions need to be made.
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