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Hartwell a Falcon!!!
To be true I never believed that Ed Hartwell choose Atlanta. I was thinking that this guy looked only for some $$$ like most of the others FA. But i was wrong.Ed really wants play for us as Matt Lehr and win the next Superbowls
i like this kind of attitude.

Falcons | Hartwell Agrees to Six-Year Deal - from http://www.KFFL.com
Mon, 21 Mar 2005 08:12:32 -0800
ESPN.com's Len Pasquarelli reports the Atlanta Falcons have reached a six-year contract agreement with free agent LB Ed Hartwell (Ravens). The deal totals $24.25 million and includes an $8 million signing bonus. There are additional base salary guarantees in the first three seasons of the contract. The deal will pay Hartwell $10 million in its first two years and $13.25 million over the first three seasons.

another link

http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/columns/s ... id=2018331

Now we ve got one of best line of backers with D Mo Hartwell - Brooking

I'm really excited by this signing! I have had good feelings about Demario coming on this year as a solid starter who has a lot of athletic ability. Now, he will be joined by two of the best LBs in the game in Brooking and Hartwell. I'll bet they still draft a decent LB in the middle rounds of the draft in order to strengthen their depth, but we are going to have perhaps one of the best LB corps in the NFL. Now we just need to bolster the DL and secondary a little bit.

This is a good pick up for the Falcons. Along with Rich Coady, Ike Reese, and Ronnie Heard the addition of Hartwell has improved the Defense as far as depth and starting positions.


I hate to see the likes of Matt Stewart and Ed Jasper leave the team but such is the nature of the game. ED was gone anyway and Stewart never would have been the top line starter we needed although he was a good dependable player. As far as the Hall boys, T. had just to big a contract and C. never really worked out.

All in all I have enjoyed following the Falcons more in the last three seasons than the previous fifteen or twenty simply because I now feel that they actually have a concept of what it takes to be a winner.

Great move by the falcon's.The linebacker core should now be a strength with athletic ability and talent.Now the def line needs reinforcements,a safety and the off line plus another possible receiver.I read somewhere today that look for safety to be a high pick with means brodney pool or josh bullocks or shazor possibly in the second.

I think there's a chance that T. Hall can return to the team later in the off-season. Hartwell is definitely a hard-nosed aggressive middle man. I really think he's a poor man's Ray Lewis.

I said this about him in my 2001 draft preview:

And I still feel like that today. My only concerns are these:

1) His readjustment to the 4-3. I don't think it's a huge problem, but excelling in the 3-4 for 3 years beside arguably one of the Top 5 greatest defenders of all time, doesn't make his adjustment that much easy.
2) He's a bit one dimensional. He'll have to be yanked in passing situations. He's basically a 2-down guy that struggles in coverage. Not a huge issue since guys like Reese, Demorrio, and Brooking can pick up the slack.

He's a guy that should have been a hotter commodity on the market, but I think teams were wary of those things I mentioned and weren't exactly ready to pay big bucks to a 2-down linebacker that may or may not excel in their scheme. He's not a super fast guy either, so don't buy totally into that "Super Speedy LB Corps" stuff that I'm sure you're going to hear a lot about over the next week or so. He proabbly only having speed around 4.75 (He was clocked at 4.85 coming out of school), which is not slow for a linebacker, but definitely not fast either. But what he does have is a quick burst, something I think both Demorrio and Brooking have as well. And that's really what LBs need. Brooking has as good as burst as any LB in the league, IMO, and that's why I think is why people tout him so much. Demorrio has good burst, but it stems a lot from his good long speed.

A great signing, and he's a Pro Bowl type player that really upgrades the entire front 7. Now I think a big concern is improving the DTs so that we can have better guys that can keep blockers off him. If Antwan Lake enters this year's training camp at anything higher than our #4 DT, we're in trouble. He's a marginal NFL player that would be fighting to make most NFL team's practice squads.

Nice pick up for you guys, I was hopeing he would not end-up in the South, but oh well. Is it draft time yet?......

i agree i love these moves but i still see no movement to help the o-line
which is something i dont like

but we stil lhave time and i do have faith in McKay

Under Gibbs, the Broncos were never a team that really made splashes in free agency along the O-line. Well they did, but as they years passsed, they usually settled their OL concerns via the draft.

During Gibbs tenure in Denver, the Broncos really only went after a few guys:

Harry Swayne - 1997
Mark Schlereth - 1995 (I believe he was acquired from Washington via trade)
Broderick Thompson - 1995
Ralph Tamm - 1995
Tony Jones - 1997

And even after Gibbs took a step back in 2001:

Blake Brockermeyer - 2002
Ephraim Salaam - 2002
Cornell Green - 2003

The Broncos have been pretty adamant about not spending big money on other teams O-linemen. 8 veterans added over a 10-year period.

Thus far, this team has signed guys like Beverly, Lehr, and Herndon to bolster the O-line. Maybe Neil will be added before the start of this year, but I doubt the Falcons will overspend to get him, and probably won't be in a position to do so until after the draft.

I think Gibbs prefers to mold younger guys to his methods, and the Falcons whether right or wrong will most likely use the draft to bolster the O-line.

McKay has similar practices from his TB days, since for the early years of his tenure, many of the Bucs starters and key OL contributors were players he drafted, rather than guys he signed.