The Falcons elected to take a massive salary cap hit and, on Monday, released former starting left tackle Sam Baker.
The team, which will take a cap hit of $9.2 million over this season and in 2016 as a post June 1 cut, turned down requests to have a team official comment and explain the move.
The Falcons are retooling the offensive line after a rash of injuries over the past two seasons. Also, first-year head coach Dan Quinn is moving to a more balanced offense, which will feature the outside-zone perimeter rushing attack and more athletic linemen.
“Jake (Matthews) will be at left (tackle), and we’ll take it from there,” Quinn said recently.
When asked about Baker after a recent OTA practice, new offensive line coach Chris Morgan was basically nonresponsive and went into some coach-speak about competition.
“Everybody is coming out to compete…we are all just trying to get better every day,” Morgan said. “Everything in this program is built on competition. We live by it every day.”
After the stellar 2012 season, the Falcons gave Baker a six-year, $41 million contract with $18.25 million guaranteed on March 12, 2013. He played four games under that contract for an average of $4.56 million per game.
Baker, 6-foot-5, 301 pounds, played in 70 career games with 61 starts for the Falcons.
After going 4-12 and 6-10 over the past two seasons, the Falcons are in the midst of a massive rebuilding project.
With the release of Baker, the Falcons have now purged 72 percent of the starting lineup that took the field against the San Francisco 49ers in the NFC championship game after the 2012 season.
Baker, 30, was often injured over his career and was coming back from a torn right patellar tendon in his knee, which caused him to miss all of the 2014 season.
Baker was trying to come back from left knee surgery that knocked him out of 12 games in the 2013 season.
Since being drafted with the 21st overall pick in the 2008 NFL draft, Baker played all 16 games just twice — in 2010 and 2012. The Falcons went 13-3 during both of those seasons and won the NFC South.
In 2012, with Baker at left tackle, quarterback Matt Ryan set five franchise passing records and the team fell one play short of making its way to the Super Bowl.
In 2013, when Baker played just four games before succumbing to knee surgery, Ryan was sacked 44 times, was pressured an NFL-high 203 times and the Falcons finished 4-12, tied for worst record in the NFC.
At the time of the last injury, Matthews, who was picked sixth overall in the 2014 draft, moved over to left tackle. Baker would have had to win the right tackle spot or earn the left guard spot that was vacated by the earlier release of Justin Blalock.
Matthews played 962 snaps and was the last ranked (84th) tackle in the league by Pro Football Focus last season. Tyler Polumbus, Lamar Holmes and Ryan Schraeder are now the main contenders for the right tackle spot.
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