It’s not the Falcons’ biggest draft ever, but it’s big

Contrary to popular belief, this isn’t the most important draft in Falcons history. The 1975 one, in which a team that had won 42 games over its first nine seasons made Steve Bartkowski the first overall pick, was more important. The 2008 draft, conducted by a rookie general manager who inherited a franchise that had seen its marquee player imprisoned, was more important. The only critical drafts are conducted by teams in dire need of a quarterback.

The Falcons in 2014 have needs, yes, but they also have a quarterback. (Matt Ryan arrived as the third overall choice in 2008.) That puts them ahead of all those teams that don’t. No matter what they do over the next three days, they’ll do it with the reasonable expectation that their offense, mostly because of Ryan, will be better than average. They don’t have to mortgage themselves to fill the position that matters most.

Over the past six seasons, the thing the Falcons have done best — in recent years, the only thing they’ve done well — is to throw and catch. What we on the outside have to grasp is that one draft class will not fix every other weakness that has arisen over those six years. The draft lasts seven rounds, not 70. The Falcons will not find a brand new offensive line and a totally new defense over these three days.

Not being imbeciles, the Falcons surely have set their priorities. They must exit this draft with either a difference-making defender or a cornerstone offensive lineman. If they get both, Thomas Dimitroff should be crowned king of the world. If they go 1-for-2, they’ll have succeeded. If they pull a Dan Uggla, they’ll have failed. We can argue forever — over the past five months, we pretty much have — as to which area is of greater importance, but no one can deny that the two are Nos. 1 and 1A.

The belief here is that the defense needs fixing first — for the basic reason that the defense under this regime has never been very good. Like all realms, the NFL is a cyclical place. Three or four years ago, the idea was to win games 41-38. The past few seasons have, at least in the NFC, given rise to new powers based on ancient concepts. The Seattle Seahawks and the San Francisco 49ers have become the best teams in the Falcons’ conference by going light on the finesse that was once the rage and returning to old-time football, to playing defense and running the ball and knocking the stuffings out of the opposition.

Arthur Blank, who calls the tune if not the actual plays in Flowery Branch, has said the Falcons need to get “tougher,” and by tougher he surely means stronger. If there’s a downside to having a quarterback as good as Ryan, it’s the inevitable tendency to rely on him to win games at the end, and for five years he did at a rate — from 2008 through 2012, the Falcons were 29-12 in one-score games — all but off the charts.

There was no organizational decision made to abandon the core principle of winning the line of scrimmage, but over time it came to matter less and less. They could throw and they could catch, and Matty Ice could steer them downfield at the end of every game, so who cared how many yards rushing were gained and yielded? But the Falcons’ five-year run of winning seasons ended in 2013 with a thud, and there’s nothing like losing to force a group rethink.