The Falcons have lost their left tackle, and we stipulate that left tackle is among the five most important positions on a football team. But the left tackle in question wasn’t Art Shell or Anthony Munoz — it was Sam Baker, who’d long been considered (wrongly, in this view) the reason this offensive line reeked. For folks to say the Falcons’ season is doomed because they’ve lost a player few outsiders ever valued is downright disingenuous.
There’s a saying in politics that sometimes what will happen eventually needs to happen immediately. The Falcons didn’t draft Jake Matthews No. 6 overall just to play right tackle in 2014; they drafted him to be their left tackle of the future. To borrow a phrase from George Allen, who once worked cheek-by-jowl with the politicos in D.C., that future is now.
Matthews for Baker at left tackle is a talent upgrade and will yield a performance upgrade soon enough. It’s not as if the rookie will be trembling at the thought of starting at LT in the Georgia Dome: He did just that for Texas A&M on Dec. 31, 2013. “I’ve been prepared to go either way,” Matthews said Monday, meaning play on the left or right, but the son of Bruce Matthews, a Hall of Fame guard, has long known his destiny is to protect an NFL quarterback’s blind side, same as he did Johnny Manziel’s.
Now that he’s there, he figures to stay for the next decade. There was little ceremony in the announcement. Come Monday morning, line coach Mike Tice simply told Matthews, “You’ve got left tackle.”
The greater issue involves who’ll man the right flank. Lamar Holmes wasn’t ready last season. He’d played in only one game as a rookie reserve in 2012, and injuries to Mike Johnson and then Baker forced Holmes to start not just at right tackle but at left.
“Things did kind of happen fast,” he said. “I settled down later in the season, but I never played particularly well.”
It would have been hard to excel on the swinging gate that was the Falcons’ O-line in 2013. Management gambled that its younger draftees — Holmes, Johnson, Peter Konz and Garrett Reynolds — were primed to take over for Todd McClure and Tyson Clabo. That might have been the worst bet since the White Sox in the 1919 World Series. Reynolds was cut after the season. Johnson and Konz remain on the roster but aren’t projected as first-stringers.
As for Holmes: He’ll have to beat out Gabe Carimi, Chicago’s first-round pick in 2011 who was subsequently traded to Tampa Bay and then cut, and Ryan Schraeder, a former free agent from Valdosta State. Some folks think Carimi will win the job, but Holmes pronounces himself a changed man. “I’m ready to play,” he said.
Then: “At the end of the day, it’s still a kids’ sport. Coach (Tice) keeps telling us, ‘If you study your tools and prepare, it should be no problem.’ I’ll be more prepared than I was last year.”
The same could be said for his team. Last year’s failure of their new-look O-line appeared to catch the Falcons off guard, as it were. They were reduced to scrounging for parts — anybody remember Jeremy Trueblood? — and hoping against hope. This year they believe they’ve done their due diligence. Said coach Mike Smith: “We’ve got nine guys who’ve started games on the offensive line.”
The again-reconfigured line mightn’t be great, but it won’t be anywhere near as awful as last season’s. Matthews and Jon Asamoah, imported as a free agent from Kansas City, will make a difference. So hold those sky-is-falling wails for another day.
About here, we’d be remiss if we didn’t offer a few words in praise of Baker, who has probably played his last down as a Falcon. Then-new general manager Thomas Dimitroff traded up to take him in Round 1 of the 2008 draft because his first draftee — Matt Ryan — needed a left tackle to stay hale and hearty. Sure enough, Baker was solid enough to start as a rookie on an 11-5 team.
When healthy, Baker remained a serviceable if not sensational LT. His presence gave Ryan the chance to be good. His absence gives Matthews the chance to be great.
