FLOWERY BRANCH -- After the second and third rounds of the NFL draft were completed, Falcons general manager Terry Fontenot and coach Arthur Smith addressed the media late Friday night.
Here’s what they had to say about the selection of guard Matthew Bergeron and defensive end Zach Harrison in the NFL draft:
Fontenot: “We’re excited about the outcome today. We clearly value the lines of scrimmage. We know that’s where games are won and lost, and to get two players with Matt and Zach, too, we got bigger. We added size, strength, power up front, and both those guys are wired the right way. They’re made up of the things that we value. So real excited to bring both those players in.”
On traits they saw in Bergeron and Harrison:
Smith: “Matt is a guy that played out of tackle at Syracuse. We’ll start him inside. Just the vision we have for him now, we like the depth we have, and where we’re at with the O-line, and so we can bring him along the right way. He has a lot of power in his game. So, you see some of that at the Senior Bowl when he went in there. Like I said, he is wired the right way. Got to some spend time with him. ... We’ve got a clear vision for him, and we’re excited about getting him in our program.
Zach, Zach is another guy we were able to work out at Ohio State when we went up there. Length. Clearly, he was a big recruit coming out of Ohio State. Obviously, kind of coming into his own. Still pretty young, and there’s not the pressure on him right away. We have some good veterans in there on the edge that can help him. He can give you a little interior pass rush too. We’ll see when he gets here. But that’s a good room for a young guy to walk into with Calais (Campbell) and Bud (Dupree) and (Lorenzo Carter) and Grady (Jarrett) and David (Onyemata). So we’re fired up about both those guys being here.”
On Harrison hitting his stride and him saying he can play at several positions on the defensive line:
Smith: “Sure. Those guys have confidence and stuff like that. And when you get those guys, they’re excited. Sometimes I’m hoping they give us some good team meeting material, so I’ll come back through and see what those guys said. That’s usually entertaining.
With Zach, from that area of the country, huge expectations coming in there, and he wants to come in. He is a young guy, and so we feel that there’s a lot of room to develop, and there’s no pressure immediately for him because of the way that room is constructed right now.”
On whether they value guard/tackle flexibility in the roster-building process:
Smith: “Sometimes, as you get into the season, when you are dealing with injuries, you don’t want to have musical chairs for a young guy. Some of it’s necessity. Like our first year even with Jalen because of the way the camp started and just to get him going, and then obviously, we have talked about many times what happened in week one, and kind of thrown into the fire there and dealing with his back issues where his development is at.
To answer your question, it certainly helps because if they aren’t a starter, they need to have position flexibility. Now, it does help that you can dress eight of them, but we do value that.”
On what they saw during the evaluation of Bergeron that gave them confidence he could play inside despite playing tackle in college:
Smith: “It’s the way he is built. Everybody has different philosophies, you know, what they’re looking for in offensive linemen. And some people get so rigid on schemes or whatever it is, their cup of tea that they’re looking for with O-linemen. When a guy is as smart as Matt and the way he has played and really for us the vision of the way he is built. I hate using comps, but I will give you one in this instance about guys that played tackle that ended up out of necessity moving into guard. A guy named Rodger Saffold. I coached Rodge at the end of his career. He was playing really good football there. Early in his career at tackle, that’s what he was drafted to be. You know, he ended up having a great career and still playing right at guard.
I’m not saying Matt is Rodge, but they’re similar body types, power. It’s just similar experiences with them. He is big, tough. Obviously, all these guys are transitioning to the NFL. It’s a lot different from college. But we feel good about where we’re at and our program and our coaching staff to develop him as well.
Fontenot: “In a lot of cases, you’re going to see that, where if you are the best offensive lineman, you’re going to play left tackle. So, you’ll see that a lot in college, guys are playing that, but then I think our staff does a really good job and Coach does a good job of looking at the skill set, really evaluating the player and having a clear vision of how we’re going to use him.”
On the motivation to trade up in the second round to select Bergeron:
Fontenot: “We always talk about conviction and passion. When you love a player, and you really want him and then you want to go get him. When you feel that, you would rather do that. There’s other players that we value. If we’re sitting there, we have a plan. If we’re here and if he goes, we know how it goes off, but sometimes, I’m telling you, man, it’s almost like people have cameras in your facility sometimes, and you’ll sit there, and you have a stack of eight players, and they just go, and they go, and they go. So, when you have conviction and you feel really good, which we did, we said let’s go up and get him.”
On where he envisions Harrison playing along the defensive line:
Smith: “That’s a great question, it’s how do we develop these guys and let them have some early success. He does. He is a smart guy. Eventually, as his game evolves, we can play him in multiple spots. Just early on, you know, I think you see a lot of early downs to develop him at the edge, and that’s a good room for him to do that. There’s a lot of veterans in there that can play and that he can learn from. They all have their own unique skill sets, but early on, and then if he continues to work and has success, then his game can expand. A better example is when he steps in there with Calais Campbell. He is in different schemes and has played different spots, and the guy’s had a 40-year career. We get in there, and we feel good about Ryan (Nielsen) and that room with Lanier (Goethie) and Hux (Dave Huxtable) and some of those vets. I think it’s a very good room for him right now.”
On the potential of having Campbell provide mentorship to Harrison:
Smith: “Sure. But you’ve got to have the right vets. Sometimes people run away with narratives that just aren’t true, and they’re in buildings, inside the walls, and you pump up somebody and say, ‘oh, this guy is a great leader’, and he may fool the outside world, but Calais is. That’s a real dude. Trust me. I’ve been on the other side of going against him and game-planning against him. There’s a lot of things you can learn. He can learn from Bud, too. As a guy that’s started to find a groove as a power rusher, Bud has had a lot of success as a power rusher. As his game expands – really, it’s like the day-to-day routine. These guys, when they come in here, it’s a long journey as a rookie. Those guys can help him out. They’ve been through it. Same struggles.”
Fontenot: “And Zach is big, but nobody has Calais’s body type. That brother has got to duck to come in that door. He is a big dude, giant.”
On how much of Bergeron’s ability to get to that second-level and match up against linebackers factors into why they decided to trade up for him:
Smith: “There’s a lot of reasons we wanted him. We have our core values, but we don’t put ourselves in a box. You know, you start eliminating some good football players. Just like ad nauseam we talk about position-less players, well, a little bit too, he might not be the perfect – if you are writing it out, he is a different player than Chris (Lindstrom). That’s a bad guard comparison. He is a different player than Henny (Matt Hennessy) and Kyle Hinton and the other guys that we have in our program. But we like the intent that he plays with. I do like guys that are going to go, and you might have to pull them back, may have to clean up some technique. That guy is trying to put somebody into the sideline. I’ll deal with that. The guys you have to push to go harder. That’s a problem. It’s a problem for Terry and I. We like Matt’s intent. He is smart. Like I said, there’s not a lot of pressure. Certainly, there’s an expectation when you invest like that, but the way the room is built right now, I mean, he has to go in there and earn his spot, and we feel good about the depth.”
On whether Bergeron’s physical makeup is what attracted them or whether there are other factors that went into the decision to select him in the second round:
Smith: “Well, physically, yes. Certainly, starting there, and then things happen a lot quicker inside with some of those guys with tackle. An old coach told me this one time, and certainly everybody has their arguments, but for younger players, it’s harder the closer you are to the ball. Things just happen pretty damn fast in this league. As much movement as you see and all the multiple fronts, that’s the trend. People start moving a lot, trying to cut the run game up for us. Things happen quickly. Like the way you set sometimes at tackle, it doesn’t happen as fast. It happens a little bit quicker at guard. You’re looking for instincts, spatial awareness, and then the way he comes off the ball, it gives him a chance early to have success. Sometimes you have young tackles. There’s only a handful of blocks you are really getting. Sometimes I joke, you get confused? That big guy on the end, block him. Let’s start there. We joke, but there’s not as many blocks. On the back side, you’re kind of in a combination. Guard, there’s all kinds of things. You’re working with the centers. You’re working with tackles. You have to be very intelligent and have instincts. Certainly, we feel that about Matt, or we wouldn’t have made the selection.”
On Bergeron spending one day at the Senior Bowl at left guard at the request of a coach and saying he felt better as the day went on:
Smith: “Sure.”
On what kind of impression that made on the coaching staff:
Smith: “It’s not just him. We value everybody’s opinion. You have to have a vision for a guy to have success in here. It’s not going to happen overnight. There are things we feel good about where the roster is at. Obviously, we believe in the player. He has to go in there and earn it, but, yeah, certainly any time. Even if you played left guard and all of a sudden you have to go over and play right guard, it’s going to take a little bit. Depending how much you’ve done it.”
On what this offseason has been like being able to do some things that they couldn’t do the last two years:
Fontenot: “It’s been a lot of fun and not taking anything away from the other offseasons, but we have a clear vision for what we’re looking for and the makeup that we’re looking for and the types of players that we’re looking for just like, again, these two players we added today. It’s fun to watch them because these are violent. Their tape is fun to watch because they’re trying to finish people, and they’re blocking people off the film. They’re violent, tough, physical players. We believe we’ve added a lot of those players. When you have the opportunity to add those players, it’s exciting. It really is. Then you can continue to add because it’s competition, so you are going to have more competition. You’re going to have a more competitive camp and iron sharpens iron like man sharpens man, but our focus has remained the same that, hey, we have to bring in the right kind of people because we know how we’re going to win games, and we’re going to win it because we’re going to be the smarter, tougher, more competitive team because we’re going to put in that work on a daily basis. We have to bring in players that like to work. It’s been fun. It’s been fun to be able to sit down and discuss things and have a plan and really have an opportunity to execute that plan. Then we get into the draft, and we can just keep adding players. Once we get out of this draft, we’re going to keep looking. If there’s an opportunity to make this team better, we’re going to do it. Only way I can say it is it’s been fun and exciting.”
Smith: “It has been. Jeff, that’s why we haven’t felt desperate going into the draft. A lot of times if you are really thin and hopefully we’re healthy going into week one, but it allows you to certainly develop guys at the right pace when you don’t feel like you have to put them out there too quick. If they’re ready and certainly if they’re the better player, they will play. I’m not saying that. Strategically, there’s kind of, like, guys that every point of their career. We have some guys that are veterans that expect to play good football. Maybe in a one, two-year deal. We have guys in the middle part. Guys that we brought back. Then we have the young guys that are going into year two, year three, and with this class. It will be a very competitive camp. We know that. We feel really good about where we’re at right now, but like Terry talked about, any opportunity to improve, we’re going to do it whether it’s a trade or somebody makes a cut. We think the guy can help us, we’ll obviously bring him in.”
On being able to spend more than other teams this offseason:
Fontenot: “I’ll say this, though, and I guess, yeah, there are certain ways you can structure things, but I’ll say really a lot of the players that we were talking about there were other teams in the same range. So it’s not like we just said, hey, we’re going to go offer more money than anybody else and get this player in here. It really wasn’t like that. There was options for the other players in the same range, and that was kind of the cool thing about it. I think it says a lot about this organization, the city, the culture, the coaches, the people that are here. The players really want to be here, and it’s been made real clear because there’s a lot of situations. All the players that we signed were players that had markets and they had a lot of people that wanted them, but they wanted to be here. Again, I know the money is, but there are players that other teams had the same range of money on the table, and they really wanted to be here. That’s what was really fun about it. Now, obviously, you try to figure out ways to do things that other teams can’t do. But at the end of the day the players that we brought in, that we offered, other teams were in those ranges, and they chose Atlanta. They feel that they want to be a part of something special. I think they know that, and it’s the staff. It’s the coaches. It’s the players that are already here and the locker room that we already have, the Gradys (Jarrett) and the Jakes (Matthews) and the Chrises (Lindstrom), all these guys, players want to be a part of that.”
On whether a running back needs to be versatile for a team to draft one as high as the Falcons drafted Bijan Robinson:
Smith: “For us. I’m not going to speak for another team. We certainly value that. Sometimes conventional wisdom, everybody likes to run out in front of certain hot takes, and sometimes you see old trends become new again and get proved wrong. You see it in every sport. I don’t want to sound like every team -- I love people that talk about these theories and these vague theories and you have to do this and you have to do that. Some people get arrogant where their takes, and they get proven wrong and cry like you can’t do that. OK. Well, it’s been proven over and over again in every sport. In basketball, all right, you have to shoot nothing but threes to win. Well, it works for some teams, but there’s ebb and flows. Can you be big-man centric? Milwaukee, right, they won a championship. I don’t know the intricacies of the ins and outs. Just see the ebbs and flows and try to get creative. And certainly the game changes in certain areas, and you are probably getting more versatile players coming in the league too. Just by nature we’ve talked about that too. For us, we value that. But to say that somebody -- if Earl Campbell was in the draft, and somebody couldn’t go win Earl Campbell, I wouldn’t bet against Earl Campbell. I’m not comparing Bijan, I know they’re Texas guys, I’m not comparing at all. You understand my logic. Like could Walter Payton still lead your team? I think Walter Payton would probably still be a pretty damn good football player. I don’t know. For us, we like the versatility.”
On whether they see the league shifting back to a power run philosophy after the offensive trends of the past number of years:
Smith: “Yeah, Jeff, that’s another great question. That’s the beauty of this game because there’s so many variables. There’s a lot of smart people involved that study it, and it’s -- you can go through it, and sometimes you got to watch through the film and you’re really grinding through it and you’re in it like, and some people -- like I said, it’s good for the game, so many people covering, so many people care, people are debating it, but it’s probably the most complicated game when you really break it down just because you have 22 people out there and the scheme, and you may feel like you have a perfect play, and the snap gets botched or -- come down to it, and you have a great play, and the right tackle just misses or whatever it is or a corner falls down.
As you see trends, certainly there was a lot made about people playing shell defense. It just becomes a numbers game in math. How do you protect those gaps? Sometimes is it necessarily because of the way people are playing on first and second down and a lot of the jet motions and things like that? You need to sort it out in front of you, and maybe people say, ‘Hey, we’ll keep it in front of us instead of playing so much single high.’ It ebbs and flows.
No different than the trend that Seattle had where they made cover three in vogue, and now you see people coming back and two-high. Is it out of necessity because of the motion and people need to sort things out?
But, again, when you go to shell coverage, it’s just a math game. How do you want to get that extra player into those fits in the run gaps. Do you want a two-gap up front, the way you want to cut the front up to do it. That would probably be why you’re seeing a trend coming back to it. Just kind of going whether or not, whether you are going to play that shell defense and take away some of the shots that are happening, first, second down, play action. Ok, have you to counter back because the defense -- they’re always going to adapt. They’re always going to adapt. That’s probably my best answer to give you there.”
On whether they were drawn to Bergeron’s story of getting to where he’s at in his career:
Smith: “If there’s a good player that happens to spend time and grows up in Antarctica in one of those regional -- whatever they call it, those scientific research areas, right? Yeah, we’ll take them if they can help us win.
In all seriousness, he is a unique background, right? The cool thing is he wasn’t a big recruit. Went to Syracuse and stayed there, was loyal to that commitment. There’s all kind of cool stories.
Terry kind of talked about it. We love getting out and meeting people. Like I said, there’s a lot of cool stories. You see that in a lot of sports, too. The Canadian influx in basketball. You’re seeing certainly coming into football, too.”
On whether they have a philosophical belief that there’s a certain number of players they need to select among the line of scrimmage each year in the draft:
Fontenot: “No, not really. I think for us, we love the way today went. We wanted to go up and get Matt, and that worked out. We’re excited that we were talking a bunch of guys. Who knew who was going to be there at 75? If that would have been a defensive back or other position, a linebacker, we would have taken one of those players. We value the line of scrimmage, and obviously, we made investments in free agency because the right guys were available.
We value that, but we never put a number on, ‘Ok, we have to come out of this draft with this many players here or there.’ We really want to take guys that we have a clear vision for, and they’re going to make an impact. It fell. Sometimes you do. You do your best. You work as hard as you can, try to anticipate things. Sometimes you need a little luck, and we came out today and we’re excited how it happened that we were able to add two players that we have clear visions for.”
On what they plan to do between the 113th selection and the 224th selection on Day 3:
Fontenot: “You try your best. You do try to anticipate who you think could be there. We say, ok, let’s discuss. We’ve had those discussions and have done all that. You get a little deeper into it. And we talk through things of who you think is going to be there, and then when you get closer to your pick, there’s already going to be a few players that we say we will move up for these particular players, and you talk about it.
Yeah, four or five players that you would move up for, and then you are down to one, and you say let’s go get him. You do things like that.
If there’s not, then you just want to be patient and just wait. When you get your ten picks out and, okay, you have a little more serious discussions. Do you need to pull in medical and talk a little bit more about something? Do you need to get a little deeper with some of the conversations? You work through that, but outside of that, you are just being patient and waiting.”
AJC’S 2023 POSITION-BY-POSITION DRAFT SERIES
WIDE RECEIVERS – Past few drafts have spoiled NFL teams looking for wide receivers | Top 10 WRs
RUNNING BACKS – Running backs Bijan Robinson, Jahmyr Gibbs may have to wait to hear their names called | Top 10 RBs
TIGHT ENDS – Notre Dame’s Michael Mayer heads a dee TE class | Top 10 TEs
QUARTERBACKS – Bryce Young’s small stature no longer an issue in the NFL | Top 10 QBs
OFFENSIVE LINE – Skoronski’s short arm length being scrutinized for left tackle | Top 5 C,G, &OTs
DEFENSIVE LINE – Is Jalen Carter the real deal or a potential bust? | Top 5 DTs, DEs
LINEBACKERS – Dutchtown’s Will Anderson expected to go in the top 5 of NFL draft | Top LBs
CORNERBACKS – Former Georgia standout Kelee Ringo one of the top cornerbacks in the NFL draft | Top CBs
SAFETIES – Alabama’s Brian Branch, Jordan Battle are top safeties in the NFL draft | Top FS/SS
SPECIAL TEAMS – Michigan’s Jake Moody hopes to kick way to NFL draft | Top STs
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