Summerhill

You never know what is going to happen next draft, but 6 weeks ago the Falcons had it teed up to pick an excellent RB prospect in Javonte Williams who checked a lot of the same boxes as Derrick Henry and they passed.

The Falcons can pretty easily get to 9-7 or 10-6 if things go well but they don't have the top end talent to start winning playoff games against good teams. If you look at the past bad teams that quickly flipped the switch, you see groups of really high draft picks who turned out to be really good and all started playing really well at the same time. The Falcons are coming off of too many 7-9 type seasons where they were not drafting high enough to pick elite players. If you refer back to the original post with the Rams and Jaguars, the Falcons just don't have players like Aaron Donald,

Of course Mahomes at his best is at another level than what Ryan was ever capable of and currently capable. The template now should be the Peyton Manning Broncos.

I like the Hawks chances. With Capela and Collins they have two good big men to throw at Embiid and if either get into foul trouble Okongwu is starting to come into his own. With Hunter pretty close to full strength they can have him lockdown Harris.

This is hopefully the difference. I'm less interested in specific play calling and more in overall philosophy and team building. One seemingly fundamental difference between Shanahan and Smith is that Smith seems to favor a much more brawny offensive line. The Shanahan system has had a reputation of not being able to close out games against good teams going back to Mike Shanahan.

This. Sometimes the other team is better and deserves to win.

I think that game was a simple talent mismatch on the lines. The previous season when Tennessee was rolling in the playoffs they had Taylor Lewan at LT and Jack Conklin at RT. The next season Lewan got injured and Conklin left in free agency. The Titans did a good job maintaining close proximity to the status quo in the regular season, but once you get to the playoffs you need talent to win. They just didn’t have enough talent to match up with Baltimore’s strong front.

In today's passing NFL you don't need 2-gap behemoths like Casey Hamtpon and Vince Wilfork. You can play a normal 4-3 style NT like Davison.

This is an interesting thought. Historically the Falcons have struggled with bigger, more physical teams, which often reside in the AFC, and also teams with "multiple" defenses, which also often reside in the AFC. Hopefully that can change.

This is a very fair point. NFL = Not For Long and teams that go down don't usually stay down for long, especially when you have a good QB. The one snag is those first two years the Falcons missed the playoffs, they still finished 7-9 and thus missed out on franchise-resetting draft picks. The 2019 draft wasn't that great so it is hard to find many picks much better than Lindstrom but 2020 was pretty lit and while Terrell has potential you'd still prefer to have Becton, Wirfs, or Kinlaw.

Exactly. I doubt Dimitroff was ever near the point of discussing what he was going to do in this draft.

He took another step in year 4 but he was still really good in year 2.

But that is the conundrum. No one wants to use the #4 overall pick on Austin Hooper. And that is not a knock on Hooper, who has had a very nice career. When you draft non-premium position players that high, you need them to be really really really good. If you draft a DE that high and don't get Myles Garrett but only get Chris Long, you're still fairly happy.

I hope for the best with him, but for the overall question he is an obvious pick because despite getting picked in the 4th round he was only the 5th center picked in the draft. He simply has a much higher pedigree and path to playing than almost any other player picked in the 4th round. There were roughly 10 DEs picked at that point and 15+ CBs.

While there's not exactly an abundance of tape to watch of Walker at Fresno State, I'm not seeing any evidence of him as a designated pass rusher. He's an offball linebacker.