NFL executives skeptical of Atlanta’s draft, offseason

“I don’t know what Atlanta is doing yet,” one exec said. “They have talked about raising the floor, but wouldn’t you rather bottom out or raise the ceiling?” These executives were not complimentary of Avieon Terrell’s size—and some weren’t wowed by his play—and liked but did not love the Zachariah Branch pick. Overall, the sentiment above seems to capture how other executives feel about Atlanta’s offseason; there’s a sense that individual moves are defensible but the team is not pushing their chips in to win big or tearing it down to the studs to try for a more comprehensive rebuild. At least one executive is obviously nonplussed by that. The counterpoint to that is that the Falcons have been trying to raise the ceiling for three straight seasons now with major expenditures, trades, and draft capital invested and have been stuck in neutral; if the new regime believed they were close they’d presumably have gone in that direction. A teardown, meanwhile, makes a lot more sense when you’re boasting an aging roster with tight margins (see 2021) than when your team is getting younger and has a handful of stars in their primes. Some teams have made that route work, but many others have not. The counterpoint to *that* is that the Falcons haven’t looked like they’ve known what they’re doing for a while now, and even the plans that drew approval at the time have infrequently panned out. It’s perfectly reasonable for executives to look at a first-time president of football in Matt Ryan and a franchise with eight straight losing seasons and cast some aspersions on the way they’ve done business this offseason, especially with the middle course they’re looking to chart. Of course, you do have to understand that executives are far more knowledgeable than us in many ways, but their opinions should still be taken with a bit of a grain of salt. for the as a prime example of that, even if their doubts about Atlanta’s 2024 and 2025 strategies certainly have held up just fine. “You know what is going to happen?” an exec who wasn’t high on McCarthy asked. “J.J. is going to get banged up, and Howell is going to walk in there and become the next .”