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http://www.foxsportssouth.com/02/13/12/ ... eedID=4368

Hines Ward makes sense for Falcons

John Manasso
February 13, 2012

Hines Ward says he wants to retire a Steeler, and that is understandable. But in the hard business of the NFL, if the Pittsburgh Steelers do not want the aging wide receiver at any price, then what better place for the Forest Park High School and University of Georgia grad to finish up his storied career than with the Atlanta Falcons?

Here is the story. Over the weekend, the NFL Network reported that the Steelers would part ways with Ward, who is reportedly owed $4 million each season of the last two years of his deal and will be 36 in a few weeks. On Saturday, Ward posted this on his Facebook page: "I want to finish my career with the Pittsburgh Steelers. And as I've already told the organization, I am willing to work with them to restructure my contract to make sure this happens."

For Ward, staying in Pittsburgh might not be that simple. Here is how Sports Illustrated's Peter King put it on Monday: "The way he was buried in the last half of the season, it's hard to imagine the Steelers want him back, especially with the speedier bench player Jerricho Cotchery available."

Ward played an average of 14.4 snaps per game in the last nine games of the 2011 season, according to ProFootballFocus.com.

As mentioned before, the NFL is a tough, Darwinian business. No matter what a player has done for a franchise, especially one that values winning as much as the Steelers do, a team has only 53 roster spots and a finite amount of salary-cap space available. No matter how beloved a player might be (see Manning, Peyton), if a front office deems others are more valuable or if it's in the "best interests of the organization," it parts ways with him.

Pittsburgh's offensive coordinator of the past five seasons, Bruce Arians, is gone. Todd Haley is in. As we know in Atlanta, the impetus behind new coordinators is partly a fresh, objective viewpoint in evaluating personnel. Haley has no ties to Ward, which might make it easier for the organization to cut him than it would have under Arians. It's a young man's league.

While the Falcons might not have ties to Ward, Ward does have numerous ties to the area. Born in South Korea, he moved to metro Atlanta at the age of 1 and remained a resident of the state until he was drafted by the Steelers in 1998. He still owns a home in Sandy Springs.

As one of the keys to head coach Mike Smith's philosophies, the Falcons want to control the line of scrimmage on both sides of the ball. Ward, one of the most physical wide receivers in league history, would seem to fit seamlessly into that philosophy.

Yet the best argument for the Falcons to sign him would be the intangibles that he would bring. (His star power would be one of numerous secondary pluses). It has been expressed that perhaps part of the reason the Falcons have failed to win a playoff game in three tries under Smith in four seasons is that the team lacks players who have won at the highest levels.

In Ward, they would acquire a player who has won two Super Bowls and who is active in the community, which is important to the Falcons and owner Arthur Blank. Ward owns a reputation as a high character player, his arrest on suspicion of DUI in metro Atlanta in July 2011 notwithstanding.

When the team held an end-of-season press conference in January with Blank, general manager Thomas Dimitroff and Smith, Dimitroff was asked specifically whether the team had enough players with experience winning.

"In line with what I mentioned earlier about the grit and the experience and the toughness, there's no question that's going to be something that we look into this offseason," Dimitroff said.

So it's possible that Ward would fit their profile. Heck, the Falcons gave Tony Gonzalez another season and $7 million.

Finally, it's by no means certain that the Falcons' slot receiver, Harry Douglas, will be back. Douglas is one of the team's 17 free agents and Dimitroff asked to guess how many he would be able to re-sign, guessed eight.

Douglas caught 39 passes for 498 yards and a touchdown last season, but is capable of delivering explosive plays. In the team's 26-23 overtime loss to New Orleans at the Georgia Dome, Douglas had eight catches for 133 yards.

With a lot of money already committed at the wide receiver position to Roddy White and Julio Jones, the Falcons might not be able to tie up even more with a substantial raise to Douglas, who will be 28 next season. Former offensive coordinator Mike Mularkey, now the head coach in Jacksonville, could make a play for Douglas, as the Jaguars are notably thin at that position. Ward could be a cheaper option.

(It would be an interesting coincidence if the Falcons replaced a wide receiver raised in Clayton County — Douglas is from Jonesboro — with another raised there, as Ward was.)

Ward could prove valuable in the slot and also as a mentor to Jones, who could use some polish in learning his playbook and in his growth as a professional.

Whether the Steelers choose to retain Ward remains a fluid a situation. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported on Sunday, citing teams sources, that it had yet to make a decision.

If the Steelers do choose to let him go, Ward could find a welcoming home in his former one.

I don't know about this....... but I do know that of all the bonehead draft picks Dan Reeves made as Gm here in Atlanta; its
just not understandable how in the world he took Jammi German (A guy who went against everything Reeves believed in) having been
thrown off Miami in 1997, then in that third round Reeves had a choice of picking the guy with class; Hines Ward, OR the troubled J. German.

Well German stayed on the team 4 years and never cracked the starting line-up; while Hines Ward has been a Champion ever since 1998- 2012.... Its mistakes like this that haunt your team and us!!

Maybe bring his back just to get rid of that curse!! Its 5 times a better investment than was Joe Horn; and we paid him about what Hines
has left in Pitt.... without a reduction!!

I don't see it. great player but if he is done in Pittsburgh I'd say he can't help us. We don't need to be plucking aging wide RWs off the wire liek we are one guy away from the SB. Ward is no doubt the most damning non-pick of Dan's regime. All I can recall about german was a long TD catch that seemed to take seven minutes to elapse.

Jammi German was one of my guys, largely because he was so vilified right from the start from people on the Roost because he wasn't Hines Ward, but I'm not going to try and pretend that he was anything more than a middling football player. My recollection was that he was a pretty good ST player, which I think is the predominant reason why Reeves drafted him. Reeves mantra generally was after the 2nd round, all picks must be geared towards special teams. I think it's one of the reasons why our special teams was always extremely good under him and Joe DeCamillis, because he was seemingly always drafting to make his son-in-law (or rather his wife & daughter) happy. And sometimes with the way that Thomas Dimitroff drafts, his doesn't seem to be radically different.

But anyway, Ward would make sense as a No. 4/slot receiver if the Falcons were to manage to lose Harry Douglas. The problem is that as a No. 3 option, he's just not going to be a particularly dynamic option.

But I do find it interesting, that as this article notes after Ward missed a Week 8 matchup vs. New England with a bum ankle, his playing time was greatly diminished. He played only 130 snaps over the Steelers last 9 games. But in those games, he was targeted 26 times. The interesting thing is that Jerricho Cotchery, the player that had essentially taken his role and saw an increase in PT got 279 snaps over that span, but only saw 28 targets. Basically, Ward was twice as good as Cotchery in terms of getting open. Not to mention, Ward caught 20 out of his 26 targets (77%), vs. Cotchery who caught 16 out of his 28 (57%).

To really illustrate the point I'm trying to make is that if you look around the league, your typical No. 3 WR is giong to play between 400-600 snaps per year, and subsequently be targeted between 30-80 times, obviously depending on the quality of the player. If you extrapolate Ward's 130 snaps to 500, that would mean he would see around 100 targets. For the record, the highest number of targets for any WR that played under 500 snaps this year was Lance Moore with 72.

Now, for the record I do think this is somewhat a statistical trick. During the first 7 games, where Ward played 362 total snaps, he was targeted 37 times. That rate of targets is basically the exact same as Cotchery's was in the 2nd half of the season. The other thing worth noting is that a lot of Ward's targets at the end of the year came on very short throws, thus why he only averaged 6.15 yards per catch, and only 5 of his 20 receptions went for first downs. Compared to Cotchery who had 13 of his 16 catches go for firsts. In the first half of the season, Ward averaged a much more respectable 9.92 yards per catch, and 15 of his 26 catches went for first downs.

Cotchery was a deep threat, evidenced by the fact that when you subtract his YAC from his yardage totals, he averaged about 11.9 air yards per reception (typically 12 usually signifies you as a vertical threat), while in the 2nd half of the year, Ward's air yards were about 1.5 per reception. Prior to that in the first 7 games, it was 6.1 yards.

So I think his numbers are probably inflated by a lot of short throws, likely from Big Ben looking to get him touches because of his cut in playing time.

Long story short, I do think Ward is probably more effective than his numbers indicate at face value, but at this point he should only be on the Falcons radar as a replacement for Douglas, not as an upgrade to anything we currently have. At this point, I think we already have a poor man's version of him already on the roster in the form of Eric Weems, who is a much better blocker than I think he often gets credit for being.

This move wouldn't make much sense along with the fact that I think Hines will retire if he's not back with Pittsburgh. I could never see him play for another team.

No, German wasn't good at anything. The justification for drafting him was that his value had dropped because other teams thought he was damaged goods. Because he hadn't played in 2 years! As Cyril said, taking German over Ward went against Reeves' own values, which made the pick even harder to fathom. Bringing an aging Ward to Atlanta 15 years later would only add insult to injury.

Ward makes sense for the Falcons only if you are a Saints, Bucs or Panther fan.

Bring back Eric Dickerson!

No reflection on Hines because he is one of my "wish he has been a Falcon", but NO, NO, NO! We receivers way above the average NFL team and we need to concentrate on keeping/developing them. Our needs are OL and Defense depending on the defensive scheme. Get something good up front and see what is left in the kitty for something else. I want to see Hines in the Hall as a Steeler and not sullied like Deion by several teams.

A one year deal makes sense if we don't resign Douglas. Remember with TG our number 3 wr is really our fourth option, and Hines is a good run blocker and proven winner.

I like Hines, but there are probably younger, faster run blocking WR's available. It really doesn't make sense to have him one year to be a 4th option blocker....

Angry as a 1 year stop gap I think it would work, if we had more draft pics I'd say we use a 3,4,5 pick to try and fill it, but in our current situation it might just work. Of course I'm assuming he's taking the minimum salary wise. Anything more than that and I change my opinion to pass on him.