Mr. Blank, It Is Time To Fire Thomas Dimitroff.

[KRUNKuno]

Is Paroli any better? Should he take TD's place?

Perogi?

[KRUNKuno]

Where is Gazoo? He is Dimitroff fanboy and he had every excuse in the book for TD's failing and laid talent deficit on Smitty.

C'mon gazoo - please surface and let us know how Dimitroff is still a genius. I am sure you still feel the same way about him, right?

Gazoo's been on here for a while now basically saying we have no talent and need a new GM.

[g-dawg]

Here's where you're wrong. Anyone who defends Mike Smith by claiming he just wasn't dealt a good hand don't understand that Smith didn't just leave everything to TD. Those guys made decisions together as a partnership. TD drafted the guys that Smith wanted for his defensive schemes. Smith is just as much to blame as TD. Just because TD has the final say doesn't mean he didn't value his head coaches opinion or avoid his insight. You can blame TD for signing free agents like TJax and Dunta to big contracts. But don't give Mike Smith a pass and blame TD only for drafting guys like Dez Southward and Lamar Holmes

Bullsheot.

Smitty earned his walking papers and most of TATF was glad to see him go. Of course GM and coach work together on personnel but GM has final say and did so for entire Dimitroff tenure.

Also, TD hired Smitty - not AB. Smitty owed his head coaching career to Dimitroff. The reason th roster sucks is on TD.

This is simple - quit being a TD fanboy.

[brown bomber]

Wow. @knoxbardeen points out that none of the Falcons' 2012 draft picks are even in the NFL ... not even just with the team

[GleasonForever!]

Ozzie Newsome has drafted one pro bowler since 2008 or something ridiculous.

We don't need pro bowlers. We need competent players at all positions. We draft practice squad players after the second round (although I liked large parts of the last two drafts).

Ozzie still runs circles around Troff on draft day. Don't get me started on FA!

[g-dawg]

Gazoo's been on here for a while now basically saying we have no talent and need a new GM.

Good to see he came to his senses. I checked out of TATF about six weeks ago as it was too depressing. Guess I missed the TD lightning bolt finally struck Gazoo.

[Beachwitter]

I'm done with this "Mr." Blank nonsense. Blank doesn't get undeserved reverence or a break from me.

Blank is part of the reason we suck. We all know he had a huge hand in the Julio trade. He wants to win NOW and put a lot of pressure on Smitty and TD (can't believe I'm defending TD) to make roster moves that costed the team depth and toughness.

Blank still hasn't gotten over the Vick fiasco. The Falcon Filter is nonsense he created. HE is the reason we passed on Dez then sold out for Julio. Blank is the one who wanted/wants "flashy" to sell tickets.

And I don't buy it for 1 sec that he had no knowledge of the Noise gate. As far as I'm concerned, he prolly gave McKay permission to do it and then had him take the fall for it.

HE is the reason we passed on several blue collared tough-nosed draftees and FA, because they had a certain "image." He is stereotypical. We all know he has a huge hand in the roster a la Jerry Jones. But at least Jerry has the balls to come out and take credit for his mistakes. Blank acts like he's not influential, but just supportive - when we all know it's BS.

We all joke about his mafia/Godfather image. I'm sure it's real - because he's intimidating to his coaches and staff and prolly stressful to work for. Don't let this "aww shuck" public image fool you. He's a cold hearted business man from NY.

Blank is a POS for letting people take falls when HE is influencing decisions that are responsible for their shortcomings. He's on his 48 Laws of Power sh!t. Pay attention!

Fu(k Arthur Blank.

Ya, I said it!

Well said. Blank reminds me of the owner in that Draft Day movie. Wanting to grab the splashy player at all costs without really understanding football. I love Julio and think he is our best player by far but he isnt even used properly and we gave up so much for him that has cone home to roost.

[FalconFanForLife]

Something stinks in Flowery Branch like a diseased limb that needs amputation. Blank has to keep chopping till the smell is gone. Get rid of Dimitroff and if that doesn't work, the get rid of Freddie Falcon next.

[JDaveG]

The problem is Dimitroff now owns this team and its talent (or lack thereof). You can't fire the coach, get similar results, and then say "oh, maybe another coaching change......"

At some point, he has to be accountable for his handling of the team. We have 3 drafts between 2010 and 2012 where there are a total of 2 players left on the team. Whose fault is that if not the guy making the picks?

[Mr. Hoopah!]

The problem is Dimitroff now owns this team and its talent (or lack thereof). You can't fire the coach, get similar results, and then say "oh, maybe another coaching change......"

At some point, he has to be accountable for his handling of the team. We have 3 drafts between 2010 and 2012 where there are a total of 2 players left on the team. Whose fault is that if not the guy making the picks?

A lot of folks wanted him gone after last season, and I don't know at this point if we would be any better this season had he been fired already. In FA, the offensive players were all Shanahan guys, and the defensive players fit Quinn's mold. The draft had Quinn's finger prints on it with Beasley and Collins as well.

But yes, it's absolutely time for him to go now. Even though we turned over a chunk of the roster, what remained was TD's poor drafting/signing. It's going to take a few years to make this roster over and fix the depth.

[Macintez]

Ozzie Newsome has drafted one pro bowler since 2008 or something ridiculous.

We don't need pro bowlers. We need competent players at all positions. We draft practice squad players after the second round (although I liked large parts of the last two drafts).

Flacco, Yanda, and Torrey Smith were pro bowlers off the top of my head I think.

[TheFalcoholic]

Wow. @knoxbardeen points out that none of the Falcons' 2012 draft picks are even in the NFL ... not even just with the team

Wow.

[Mega Flare]

Bye, Thomas.

[ArthursMoustache]

I'm contemplating it

[ukfalc]

Well said. Blank reminds me of the owner in that Draft Day movie. Wanting to grab the splashy player at all costs without really understanding football. I love Julio and think he is our best player by far but he isnt even used properly and we gave up so much for him that has cone home to roost.

Exactly and this board BEGGED for us to trade up for Julio.

[Mr.11]

Wow.

Is an understatement. Talk about sheer incompetence. My gosh.

[I Even Bleed Red]

Well said. Blank reminds me of the owner in that Draft Day movie. Wanting to grab the splashy player at all costs without really understanding football. I love Julio and think he is our best player by far but he isnt even used properly and we gave up so much for him that has cone home to roost.

Pretty much. Thanks bud.

Edited December 14, 2015 by I Even Bleed Red

[MilleniumFalcon]

I honestly believe some of the message board posters would've done a better job than TD in terms of drafting and free agency (would need help of salary cap guru). You really can't do much worse than he has in terms of drafting and his free agent pickups.

[FalconsFan2015]

I've posted on this subject a couple of times. I'm with I even bleed red. This is an owner problem more than the gm. I believe td's hands are tied when it comes to a lot of these draft picks and free agency.

Today on the 92.9 the game, they were going over our drafts from 2010 to the present and it is down right disgusting. All of the players from the 2012 draft are not in the nfl anymore. Its like they blind fold td, put him a dark room and he sticks his hand in a bag and draws names, so at this point i really don't think it'll make any difference who are gm is.

My last point is, AB hasn't gotten over the vick fiasco, but if this team is to move forward he's going to have to put it to bed. The new england patriots had a murderer walking their halls, they cut bait moved on and kept truckin.

[russ7000]

Blank and TD are home boys ... He ain't getting rid of him

[JD dirtybird21]

Bullsheot.

Smitty earned his walking papers and most of TATF was glad to see him go. Of course GM and coach work together on personnel but GM has final say and did so for entire Dimitroff tenure.

Also, TD hired Smitty - not AB. Smitty owed his head coaching career to Dimitroff. The reason th roster sucks is on TD.

This is simple - quit being a TD fanboy.

1. Just because TD hired Smith doesn't prove what I said is wrong. They still handled drafts together. If Smith had zero insight on the drafts then why was it him cutting players on hard knocks and not TD just doing it by himself? TD was the man in charge, but Smith still very much had a voice just like any head coach.

2. I'm not a "TD fanboy," Where in my post did I say that TD deserves tokeep his job? The purpose of my post was to prove the other poster wrong about saying how Smitty should have stayed. In my opinion, they BOTH deserved to be fired.

[RunningThePiszOuttaTheBall]

The problem is, we're not evaluating the GM position properly.

Here's an analogy -- Imagine we were having QB tryouts, and a bunch of people showed up. Imagine we interviewed them, asked how often they lift weights, how healthy their diets are, etc. We asked what their "philosophy" of throwing the ball is -- do they think of it as launching a rocket, or more like a catapult?

We assess their character and their knowledge of X's and O's.

We come away picking 2 or 3 we like. UNFORTUNATELY, AARON RODGERS AND TOM BRADY ARE IN THE GROUP WE REJECT. Why? BECAUSE WE NEVER ASKED THEM TO THROW THE DAM BALL.

This is EXACTLY what we do for the GM position -- we ask TD about how he runs a scouting org, what his philosophy is, what he learned about the Patriot way, etc. BUT YOU CAN QUICKLY TELL WHO IS GOOD AT DRAFTING AND WHO IS NOT -- BY WATCHING THEM DRAFT!

Some people have a knack for it. You can't explain why Aaron Rodgers can throw the ball craploads of yards with accuracy by his measurables. Neither can Aaron Rodgers. He just CAN. So your tryouts need to WATCH HIM do that thing, and see how he does.

Neither can you explain why a great drafter is great at it. You don't EXPLAIN this, you just FIND it. You WATCH people draft, and FIND the ones who do well, and GRAB them.

We have watched TD draft for eight years now. He's not a complete and utter braindead loser -- he's just not very good at drafting.

[JDaveG]

The problem is, we're not evaluating the GM position properly.

Here's an analogy -- Imagine we were having QB tryouts, and a bunch of people showed up. Imagine we interviewed them, asked how often they lift weights, how healthy their diets are, etc. We asked what their "philosophy" of throwing the ball is -- do they think of it as launching a rocket, or more like a catapult?

We assess their character and their knowledge of X's and O's.

We come away picking 2 or 3 we like. UNFORTUNATELY, AARON RODGERS AND TOM BRADY ARE IN THE GROUP WE REJECT. Why? BECAUSE WE NEVER ASKED THEM TO THROW THE DAM BALL.

This is EXACTLY what we do for the GM position -- we ask TD about how he runs a scouting org, what his philosophy is, what he learned about the Patriot way, etc. BUT YOU CAN QUICKLY TELL WHO IS GOOD AT DRAFTING AND WHO IS NOT -- BY WATCHING THEM DRAFT!

Some people have a knack for it. You can't explain why Aaron Rodgers can throw the ball craploads of yards with accuracy by his measurables. Neither can Aaron Rodgers. He just CAN. So your tryouts need to WATCH HIM do that thing, and see how he does.

Neither can you explain why a great drafter is great at it. You don't EXPLAIN this, you just FIND it. You WATCH people draft, and FIND the ones who do well, and GRAB them.

We have watched TD draft for eight years now. He's not a complete and utter braindead loser -- he's just not very good at drafting.

I don't buy it. Drafting isn't some innate talent where your draft picks turn to gold because you picked the right guy and the other folks picked the wrong guy. You start with good information. Your scouting reports have to be solid. Apparently ours are not. Then you have to have a good draft philosophy. Dimitroff is a risk taker. He'll trade the farm for the pick he wants. He traded up for Baker, Dominique Franks, Julio, Trufant, Maponga, Marquis Spruill and Grady Jarrett.

Three of those guys are still on the team.

That's fine -- trade up if you must (he's traded down a few times too). But you'd better hit on your picks, and we've not only failed to hit on the picks we traded up to take, but we've failed to hit on most of the others too. So we expend draft capital and get nothing in return. We end up trading away valuable picks and putting ourselves in a position where we can't afford to miss, and then we miss. A better way is to accumulate picks and treat them as commodities rather than stuff we don't need. Treat them as treasures, because they are. Green Bay trades back a lot, and even when they don't they rarely trade any picks. When they had Favre at QB, they selected Rodgers with a 1st rounder because he was the best player on the board. That's how you win. Even some of those will bust, but if you're consistently picking the best players on your board and not trading away your picks, you'll do well.

Which brings me to my other b***h about Dimitroff -- he drafts to fill holes. Everyone does that to an extent. Green Bay wouldn't have picked Rodgers the year after Favre won the Super Bowl. But you can't afford to make filling the hole the one big thing you have to do in the draft. We do. Why did we trade up to get Baker? We needed a tackle. Why did we trade up for Trufant? We needed a corner. Etc. The great teams fill holes in free agency and draft for talent. Because the draft is where you stock the cupboard with talent and depth. So don't go into the draft "needing" anything so badly you can't afford to take another position or let the draft fall to you. But Dimitroff does. So we reach for players, and sometimes it works (Julio, Trufant), and most of the time it doesn't (pretty much everyone else save Grady Jarrett, who remains to be seen).

I don't think Dimitroff lacks an eye for talent. I think he has a draft philosophy that leaves him no room for error, and EVERY GM has error on draft day. We can't afford busts, injuries, or players who aren't scheme fits because our GM trades away all our picks and moves around in the draft trying to fill holes. He could change, and to be fair since Pioli got here he has a little. But at the end of the day, it's not good enough. Too little too late. He's wrecked this team, and I don't see how he can survive it.

[RunningThePiszOuttaTheBall]

I don't buy it. Drafting isn't some innate talent where your draft picks turn to gold because you picked the right guy and the other folks picked the wrong guy. You start with good information. Your scouting reports have to be solid. Apparently ours are not. Then you have to have a good draft philosophy. Dimitroff is a risk taker. He'll trade the farm for the pick he wants. He traded up for Baker, Dominique Franks, Julio, Trufant, Maponga, Marquis Spruill and Grady Jarrett.

Three of those guys are still on the team.

That's fine -- trade up if you must (he's traded down a few times too). But you'd better hit on your picks, and we've not only failed to hit on the picks we traded up to take, but we've failed to hit on most of the others too. So we expend draft capital and get nothing in return. We end up trading away valuable picks and putting ourselves in a position where we can't afford to miss, and then we miss. A better way is to accumulate picks and treat them as commodities rather than stuff we don't need. Treat them as treasures, because they are. Green Bay trades back a lot, and even when they don't they rarely trade any picks. When they had Favre at QB, they selected Rodgers with a 1st rounder because he was the best player on the board. That's how you win. Even some of those will bust, but if you're consistently picking the best players on your board and not trading away your picks, you'll do well.

Which brings me to my other b***h about Dimitroff -- he drafts to fill holes. Everyone does that to an extent. Green Bay wouldn't have picked Rodgers the year after Favre won the Super Bowl. But you can't afford to make filling the hole the one big thing you have to do in the draft. We do. Why did we trade up to get Baker? We needed a tackle. Why did we trade up for Trufant? We needed a corner. Etc. The great teams fill holes in free agency and draft for talent. Because the draft is where you stock the cupboard with talent and depth. So don't go into the draft "needing" anything so badly you can't afford to take another position or let the draft fall to you. But Dimitroff does. So we reach for players, and sometimes it works (Julio, Trufant), and most of the time it doesn't (pretty much everyone else save Grady Jarrett, who remains to be seen).

I don't think Dimitroff lacks an eye for talent. I think he has a draft philosophy that leaves him no room for error, and EVERY GM has error on draft day. We can't afford busts, injuries, or players who aren't scheme fits because our GM trades away all our picks and moves around in the draft trying to fill holes. He could change, and to be fair since Pioli got here he has a little. But at the end of the day, it's not good enough. Too little too late. He's wrecked this team, and I don't see how he can survive it.

Some good points in there. But ... you make it sound like good drafting is common sense. Given accurate info, a reasonable IQ and proper motivation, most people could learn to be good at it. Maybe. But I think some people are phenomenal at it. And you and I would be unable to identify those people. If you can find them, that's a home run.

However, I agree with stockpiling picks. Since you're fighting uncertainty, you need to give yourself more chances to be right. More lottery tickets means a greater percentage that one of them pays off big.

But the clearest, most undeniable conclusion is this -- Dimitroff had 8 years. That's plenty long enough to see how your long-term bets pay off. And the end result is not good. We may not have found the GM we're looking for yet, but we have eliminated 1 of the 8 billion candidates alive on the earth, cuz TD ain't it.

[g-dawg]

Exactly and this board BEGGED for us to trade up for Julio.

the Julio trade is a red herring argument against Dimitroff that does not hold water - probably the 2nd or 3rd best move he ever made (behind drafting Matt Ryan and signing Michael Turner). Back to Julio, let's go back in the time machine, shall we? The following year's draft(2012) was somewhat weak link - http://www.nfl.com/draft/history/fulldraft?season=2012 and when you look at the now complete record of Dimitroff, you can clearly see he is only good at making OBVIOUS picks - so coming on here and still whining about the Julio trade is foolish. Dimitroff had stated on 790 after draft that had he stayed in place in 2011 and took a player at back of 1st round, he would have taken Gabe Carimi - so that would have been a failed pick - the 2012 draft was devoid of talent outside of a handful of guys that went early and just a few other diamonds in the rough that Dimitroff would have NEVER found.

Get off the Julio whine - it was easily one of Dimitroff's 2-3 best moves. Dimitroff is getting fired for his AWFUL free agency moves and his failure to find players in the draft.

I promise you Thomas Dimitroff already knows that he will be fired and is calling around the NFL for potential places to land - as a 2nd banana (at best).