Moving to a new location
AJC blogs are moving to a new technical platform. So check out Terence Moore’s new blog home and bookmark it.
Home > Terence Moore > Archives > 2008 > November > 12
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Harmony brings success for Falcons
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Flowery Branch — John Abraham has played a while. Nine NFL seasons, to be exact. So it is rather significant that the brilliant defensive end for the Falcons sat at his locker on Wednesday, thought about the last time he experienced this much togetherness among teammates and thought some more.
He kept thinking.
So when was it?
Abraham kept thinking, before glancing up to say, “It’s been a while,” he said, reflecting on a career that included six years with the New York Jets. Then he added, “Actually, probably never. I’ve been on some hard teams, and to have this kind of chemistry, as far as in the locker room and on the field, along with everybody communicating with each other — this probably is the best team when it comes to that situation.”
Sounds like Thomas Dimitroff knows what he’s doing. He’s in his first season as an NFL general manager. Even so, he envisioned building a team without knuckleheads long before he spent six years in the scouting department of the New England Patriots, supposedly the league’s team of teams.
“What we did [after taking over the Falcons] is evaluate the players, and then we discussed the other stuff, whether there were character issues and what not, whether there were personality traits on and off the field that we felt wouldn’t fit into our system,” said Dimitroff, 42, involved with pro scouting since 1990. “We spent a lot of time talking about that as a group. There are a lot of good football players that we didn’t feel, kicking this off, would necessarily fit into a rebuilding program.”
The results? The NFL rookies at general manager, head coach and quarterback for the Falcons are helping them shock reality in the rugged NFC South. They’ve won four of their past five games for a 6-3 record, and they’ve done so with harmony.
Since the Falcons’ 2007 season of disharmony (4-12 finish, No. 7 and his dogs, Bobby Petrino), the Falcons’ roster has changed 60 percent. The purging involved some familiar names. Alge Crumpler. DeAngelo Hall. Warrick Dunn. Kynan Forney. Joey Harrington.
Said offensive tackle Todd Weiner, in his sixth season with the Falcons: “It’s clear that the administration and the front office purposely went after guys that were going to jell together. Some players may not have gotten some name recognition in the past that they acquired in the offseason, but they looked for a certain attitude in a guy. The idea was that when good things happened, they were going to stick together, and when bad things happened, they still were going to stick together.”
Consider: After the Falcons dismantled a bad Detroit team in their season opener, they were clobbered at Tampa Bay. Unlike the past, when Abraham hinted that such a drastic turnaround would have produced “whining and bickering” across the Falcons’ locker room, they recovered to flatten a bad Kansas City team.
Then the Falcons were clobbered again at Carolina the next week, but that’s when they responded with a victory at Green Bay the next week to start their current surge to sit a game behind first-place Carolina.
You have rookies Matt Ryan at quarterback and Curtis Lofton at middle linebacker among those leading the way for the Falcons. You also have mighty contributions from free agents such as running back Michael Turner, safety Erik Coleman, kicker Jason Elam and tight end Ben Hartsock, all signed by Dimitroff since the end of last season.
As a result, you have the Falcons trying to become another team of teams.
Permalink | Comments (40) | Post your comment | Categories: Falcons/NFL
Give the Jackets a break
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I know. I know. Every team in sports can use excuses for why it is bad instead of good or good instead of great.
So forget excuses.
Well, usually.
Take Georgia Tech’s football team, for example. Give them a break. We’re not talking about a gigantic one, but a significant one.
No question, the Yellow Jackets continued their dance with inconsistency on Saturday with a meltdown at North Carolina. It stripped Tech of a legitimate shot at reaching the ACC championship game, but you know what? The Jackets still are 7-3 overall and 4-3 in the conference.
That’s not bad when you consider the Jackets were picked as also-rans in preseason polls. Not only that, they are an overwhelming exception to that perfectly wonderful no-excuse rule for at least 16 reasons. That’s how many freshmen or sophomores were among Tech’s 22 starters against North Carolina.
No ACC team starts as many underclassmen as the Jackets, and it is likely that few teams in the nation at the Division I-A level have such a distinction.
Tech also has Paul Johnson as its first-year head coach. He implemented a new offense (triple option), a new defense (less Jon Tenuta-style blitzing) and a new philosophy (fiery on the sidelines instead of the calm of Chan Gailey, his predecessor).
Even so, with games left against conference-foe Miami and those folks between the hedges, the Jackets already have as many victories now as they did after five of the last six seasons.
Yeah, they deserve a break.
