This is my favorite Falcons draft pick since Julio Jones in 2011. Not to say it’s the best: Desmond Trufant was an excellent choice, and nearly every selection since Dan Quinn took control has been sagacious. (Exception: Jalen Collins.) But Calvin Ridley arrives at a time when the prized offense had begun to tick downward. He’s the right pick at the right time.
Let’s be clear: He is not, talent-wise, Julio Jones. Both played at Alabama, yes. Both won national championships, yes. But Jones is among the most gifted receivers ever. (Heck, he may BE the most gifted receiver ever.) Ridley is two inches shorter and 30 pounds lighter. He’s also a bit slower, if we’re going by 40 times. But he’s a superb runner of routes – you don’t play for Nick Saban if you cut corners – and he projects as a slot receiver who can play in the NFL as a rookie with the potential of growing into a No. 1 receiver when Julio, who’s 29, finally begins to slow.
If we revisit the much-revisited five-for-one Julio trade, we’ll recall that Thomas Dimitroff made that move not just to push the Falcons closer to the Super Bowl, though that was definitely part of the plan, but also to provide cover for incumbent No. 1 Roddy White, then 29. The negatives of that famous trade were soon made clear: Apart from Julio, the rest of the 2011 draft wasn’t much, and the 2012 crop was an all-time dud. Still, this one receiver was – and remains – worth the cost. (And he eventually did get the Falcons to a Super Bowl, and if they’d just kicked a field goal after maybe his greatest catch, they’d have won.)
The Falcons didn’t have to trade anything for Ridley. He fell to them at No. 26. Sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good. Credit Quinn/Dimitroff/Scott Pioli for recognizing that this special receiver was worth more, in both the short and long term, than a garden-variety defensive tackle. There are, we note, more rounds remaining. (Remember, these Falcons found Grady Jarrett, who’s way more than a garden-variety DT, in Round 5.) There wouldn’t have been a Calvin Ridley waiting for them in Rounds 2 or 3.
Saban has had three great receivers at Bama – Julio, then Amari Cooper, then Ridley. All played as freshmen. All left after their junior seasons. All won national titles. The first two became Pro Bowlers. We note that the first two were taken with the Nos. 6 and 4 picks of Round 1, not the 26th. Ridley’s ceiling isn’t quite as high, but his floor is lofty. There’s not much chance he’ll flop. He has the pedigree, and he produced at the absolute highest level of college football – 89 catches as a freshman, 72 as a sophomore, 69 as a junior. He played twice against Georgia, once in the rain game in Athens in 2015, again this January in for the national title; he caught touchdown passes both times.
The Falcons had a bit of inside knowledge re: Ridley; Steve Sarkisian, their offensive coordinator, was a consultant in Tuscaloosa in 2016 and, for one game, the Crimson Tide’s offensive coordinator. That one game – the national championship against Clemson in Tampa – doesn’t offer compelling evidence that Sarkisian knows how to maximize Ridley. It was among his least productive nights as a collegian – five catches for 36 yards, no touchdowns.
But – and this is a big “but” – that was also at a time when the Jalen-Hurts-can’t-throw narrative was at its peak. The Tide were coming off a sluggish semifinal against Washington in the Georgia Dome, in which Ridley had caught only one pass and OC Lane Kiffin, who’d agreed to be head coach at Florida Atlantic and given a sassy-even-by-his-standards exit interview to Pete Thamel of SI.com, had lost the plot. Saban shoved Kiffin out the door after the semi and promoted Sarkisian, who was ticketed to take over the offense the next season.
Hurts had another awful night throwing in Tampa, completing 13 of 31 passes. The Tide’s most impressive pass was thrown by receiver ArDarius Stewart to tight end O.J. Howard. That was a deft call by Sarkisian. The rest was a mishmash.
Alabama pounded Clemson with the run, which everybody expected, but was 2-for-15 on third down. Even when the Tide scored to take the lead with 2:06 remaining – the Tigers would retake it at 0:01 – it seemed almost an accident. A scrambling Hurts found Stewart on third-and-16; Stewart found Howard on the flea-flicker, and then Hurts, scrambling again, ran 30 yards to score. Ridley didn’t touch the ball.
That, we concede, was then. We note that Saban pulled an again-ineffective Hurts at halftime against Georgia in Mercedes-Benz Stadium, so maybe it wasn’t the coordinator. Surely Sarkisian will be able to figure a way to get Ridley the ball on a weekly basis. (Surely, I say.) Surely the Falcons’ offense will look better with this glittering addition than it did most of last season. If it doesn’t, the team will be looking for a new OC come January. (Lane Kiffin, maybe?)
But this isn’t the time to dwell on what might not happen. There’s a chance Julio and Mohamed Sanu and Ridley and Devonta Freeman and Tevin Coleman and – oh, yeah – Matt Ryan will make magic happen. Yes, these are the Falcons, and there has never been anything this franchise couldn’t mess up. It would, however, be awfully hard to mess up this offense.
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