Thomas Dimitroff remembers being in the Cleveland selection room on NFL draft day in the late 1980s. He was a college student tagging along with his dad, Tom, a scout with the Browns.

"That was overwhelming," Dimitroff recalled. "I looked up and I saw thousands of names on a board. How can you come to a conclusion to who you truly want and take as your franchise player?"

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Falcons general manager Thomas Dimitroff studies game film as he prepares for the NFL draft in his office at the team's Flowery Branch headquarters. The Falcons have 11 picks, including the No. 3 overall selection and four of the top 48 choices.

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He doesn't remember who Cleveland selected. He just remembers being engrossed with the organized chaos. It was unforgettable.

On Saturday, some 20 years later, the Falcons' first-time general manager hopes not to be the wide-eyed youngster in the room again. Instead, this dressed-down dude hopes to be the conductor of a two-day roster overhaul.

Dimitroff and the Falcons have 11 picks, including the No. 3 overall selection and four of the top 48 choices. That's an opportunity to right plenty of wrongs or add to this team's history of personnel miscalculation.

"To the infant stages to scouting to where I'm at now, I feel I've grown every year," said Dimitroff, who was hired from New England, where he spent seven seasons working up the scouting department. "Being through different scenarios, different systems, different coaches, different GMs and presidents and taking it all into consideration, I've taken the best and disregarded the not-so-best parts.

"I feel I've come up with a pretty solid plan."

As important to the rebuilding process as the players drafted is the new structure in place. The old structure was dismantled by owner Arthur Blank following a last season's 4-12 campaign.

Dimitroff and coach Mike Smith are perched atop a pyramid-shaped hierarchy copied from the New England model, where coach Bill Belichick and vice president of player personnel Scott Pioli reign.

Dimitroff and Smith seek insight from assistant coaches and personnel staffers — to a point. As the importance of matters grow, more and more people are cut out of the process — just like Dimitroff was in the early stages of his career with the Patriots.

As his star rose there, so did his access, to the point where he was involved with all parts of the draft. Only a few Falcons officials have such clearance entering Saturday's draft.

"As he moves forward in Atlanta he'll take a lot of knowledge from us and his previous experiences and put together a football team the city will be proud of," Belichick said. "I'm sure that he'll take full advantage of those [draft] picks.

"Tom's a smart guy. He's astute and he's got a lot of experience evaluating players and trying to maneuver in the draft. We did a lot of that in New England. Sometimes we moved and sometimes we didn't move. He was a part of all that. He's got good instincts, a good sense about players.

"We hated to lose him but we understand he moved for a great opportunity."

While Dimitroff has never been in charge of the draft, the Falcons feel that they could not have hired a more equipped person to plant seeds in their scored earth.

Dimitroff, as the director of college scouting for New England, has been evaluating this season's college prospects for years. He knows how they play on Saturdays, but most evaluators do. They can see that on film. Dimitroff also knows how they practice, how they train and if there are problems that eliminate them from draft consideration.

Smith and his staff gave Dimitroff the offense and defense they plan to run and prototype players they want. Dimitroff and his staff narrowed the candidate pool. Smith's fondness for a certain type of player jibed with Dimitroff's model.

Their relationship is incredibly solid after just more than two months together, Smith said.

"When we watch tape, we'll watch it separately, come together and talk," Smith said. "There's no right or wrong answer. It's a matter of coming to a consensus and seeing how this draft class stacks up and how we want to rank them, put them together. Thomas has been helpful in directing me, saying 'We need to look at this guy. Here's my opinion.' We haven't been off on a whole bunch of them."

Dimitroff is incredibly confident he'll get things right, just like they did in New England in the 2003 draft (Ty Warren, Asante Samuel, Eugene Wilson, Dan Koppen). Dimitroff said he's also proud how Koppen, a player he scouted, blossomed as a fifth-round pick.

"It would be more overwhelming if I came in as a pro director," Dimitroff said. "I'm coming in with the idea that I sniffed all of these players, so to speak, face-to-face. I've been on the practice field watching these players. I feel very solid with that. It's not like I'm angst ridden at all."

He might be the only one in the draft room Saturday who isn't.