Anyone perplexed about why Thomas Dimitroff survived as Falcons GM when owner Arthur Blank fired coach Mike Smith are scratching their heads even more as the names of players drafted by Dimitroff keep flashing across the waiver wire.
Blank officially hired Dan Quinn as coach on Feb. 2 and gave him final say on the roster with Dimitroff staying on with nebulous authority. Since Quinn came on the Falcons have released 10 players drafted by Dimitroff through 2014 by my count: tackle Sam Baker, guard Peter Konz, center Joe Hawley, defense end Jonathan Massaquoi, safety Zeke Motta, linebacker Stansly Maponga, linebacker Marquis Spruill, linebacker Prince Shembo, defense end Cliff Matthews, and linebacker Tyler Starr. (Another Dimitroff draft pick, tackle Lamar Holmes, is on the physically unable to perform list.)
Baker (first round 2008) was a miss: oft-injured for the Falcons just as he was in college and no better than average when healthy. Konz (second round, 2012) was a big miss. Holmes (third round, 2012) so far has looked like a miss.
All of the rest of the Dimitroff draftees released by Quinn are misses. (Shembo is gone because of police allegations of dog abuse, not poor play or injury, but he had character questions coming out of Notre Dame so mark him down as a miss.)
Among the 10 jettisoned Dimitroff draftees only Baker, Holmes and Konz were selected higher than the fourth round. But good GMs find contributing players in the later rounds. Dimitroff had a smaller margin for error when he traded the Browns five picks (two firsts, a second, and two fourths) for Julio Jones but his drafts since 2008 have had diminishing returns.
Maybe the seven defensive players Quinn released aren’t necessarily bad players but he just decided they aren’t good fits for his system. We’ll see if any of them end up being contributing players with other teams but so far two are on the Falcons’ practice squad (Maponga and Starr) and the other five are on the street. (The Titans cut Massaquoi last weekend after claiming him off waivers from the Falcons in February).
It's not at all unusual for a new NFL player personnel boss to make drastic changes to the roster when he inherits a bad team. It is very unusual for the executive who built that flawed roster to still be around.
Back in April Jason Lisk of The Big Lead noted that of the 27 players drafted by Dimitroff from 2009 to 2012 just one player, Julio Jones, started at least eight games in 2014. This was a damning indictment of Dimitroff's draft record because players drafted in those years should have been in their primes during the 2014 season. (I won't even get into his free-agent misfires such as Steven Jackson and Ray Edwards.)
AJC colleague Jeff Schultz believes the Falcons "won" the Jones trade in part because the players the Browns drafted with the acquired picks didn't pan out. But I think that's the wrong way to evaluate it. If the Falcons had kept all of those picks then they, not the Browns, would have made the selections. Lisk notes that if half of those picks had been average by historical standards then the Browns would have "won" the trade.
Then again, based on Dimitroff’s track record it’s questionable whether he could have done better than average with those picks so maybe it’s better that he traded them for a player who could end up in the Hall of Fame. The problem is Dimitroff’s drafts have had diminishing returns since then so the Hall of Fame player will still be around once Dimitroff is gone.
The Falcons won a lot of regular-season games with Jones as the star wide receiver, Matt Ryan as star QB and Dimitroff as the GM who drafted them both. But their lasting legacies will be one playoff victory and "10 yards away" unless Quinn can quickly right what Dimitroff (and Smith) got wrong.
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