Twice over the previous five years, the Falcons sought an edge rusher in the first round of the NFL draft. In 2015 and 2017, the Falcons selected speedy and athletic defensive ends Vic Beasley and Takk McKinley, respectively. The goal was to pair them on opposite ends and let them repeatedly get after the quarterback.
It didn’t work out.
Beasley had one standout season in 2016, when he recorded 15.5 sacks and earned a trip to the Pro Bowl. Otherwise, both players did not live up to where they were picked. Beasley was allowed to walk after the 2019 season, and McKinley was cut halfway through the 2020 campaign.
With the Falcons picking fourth overall in this year’s draft, it doesn’t look like they will have an opportunity to take the kind of elite pass rusher previous classes have seen. Just a year ago, the Washington Football Team selected Ohio State’s Chase Young second overall and saw him win AP Defensive Rookie of the Year honors.
NFL Network analyst Daniel Jeremiah said NFL teams are not aligned with one another on evaluating this year’s group of pass rushers. It looks to be a mixed bag without a top tier.
“You’ve got (Penn State’s) Jayson Oweh, who is going to run in the 4.3s, a dynamic athlete who didn’t have a sack this year. You have to figure that out,” Jeremiah said. “You’ve got Kwity Paye from Michigan, who is going to test like a freak at his Pro Day. But they moved him all around. I thought he was out of position a little bit. You have to sort through that. (Georgia’s) Azeez Ojulari is a really good player on tape. The more I watched him, the more I liked him.”
Jeremiah’s top-ranked edge rusher is Miami’s Gregory Rousseau, who recorded 15.5 sacks in 2019 as a redshirt freshman. However, Rousseau opted out and did not play in 2020. Jeremiah said it’s possible that Rousseau’s decision not to play caused his draft stock to hover in the middle of the first round instead of at the top.
“You’ve got somebody who’s 6-foot-7, 260 pounds, who’s got (15.5) sacks in the ACC. He’s got some accomplishments to work off of here,” Jeremiah said. “I don’t see how he falls out of the top 15 in any case. We’ll see how he tests. If he tests well, he might be right back up there. But I thought if he would’ve played, to get a chance to see him and he was fresh in everybody’s mind, and if he had another double-digit sack year in that conference, you’d say, ‘OK, this is a top-five pick’ because you couldn’t ignore it.”
Under new general manager Terry Fontenot, the Falcons are using a best-player-available strategy, which opens the possibilities of a lot more potential players to draft. Even so, Jeremiah posed the idea that if the Falcons have an edge rusher highly ranked on their board that they possibly could trade back not once, but twice, in the first round to target him.
“When you look at the way the board shakes out, if you want to try to find an edge rusher, which is a need, you can make a case that they could trade back twice,” Jeremiah said. “Trade back once for the teams coming up for the quarterbacks and you might have somebody coming up for an offensive lineman. You could trade back and get into the teens and then find your way to Kwity Paye from Michigan, Jaelan Phillips from Miami, one of those types of players. Maybe even stay right there and get the edge rusher, Ojulari from Georgia. There might be a double trade down opportunity for them.”
The Falcons are in a unique position of needing to get under a reported salary cap of $182.5 million while adding numerous players to the roster. The Falcons started this process Tuesday by releasing James Carpenter and freeing an estimated $4 million in cap space.
As the Falcons work toward a lower cap number, they will turn to free agency to see if there are any players who can help them at positions of need. Edge rusher has turned into a need, considering Dante Fowler, who signed a three-year, $45 million last offseason, recorded only three sacks in 2020.
Unlike last year, there isn’t an elite pass rusher wowing teams at the top of the draft. Much of that might have to do with the limitations in scouting over the past year because of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the numerous pro prospects who opted out of their final college season.
While the Falcons could benefit from a pass rusher, a lot of uncertainty exists with those eligible for this year’s draft.
“I think teams are all over the map on these edge rushers,” Jeremiah said.
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