The Tampa Bay Bucs are going to be an interesting team to watch in 2013. Josh Freeman is entering the final year of his contract, and recently it was reported that the Bucs wouldn’t mind seeing rookie Mike Glennon get an opportunity.

How Josh Freeman handles this sort of adversity could impact the next five years of that franchise. I think Freeman is a talented quarterback, but I’ve never thought he had the intangibles to be a top-level starter. I liked Mike Glennon a lot, as he was the highest-rated quarterback in this draft class for me.

But I don’t think Glennon will really work as a rookie starter. The main issues I had with Glennon was that he wasn’t particularly mobile, nor does he have the intangibles that I think he could flourish as a rookie starter. In Dan Pompei’s piece linked to above, they make the comparison to Joe Flacco.

I do think that fits somewhat. You may or may not be surprised to discover that I don’t think Flacco possesses ideal intangibles. Flacco is a player that I think has benefited greatly from being on the right team. In Baltimore, he became a rookie starter because of injuries to Troy Smith and Kyle Boller. He made the most of that opportunity. But I think it helped greatly how much of the Ravens were a run-first, defensive-minded team that already had a leader in Ray Lewis. Flacco essentially never really had to assert himself as the guy up to this point. Moving forward with Lewis and others gone, and fresh off a Super Bowl he will now.

I think that’s why I’ll likely always consider Matt Ryan to be a better overall quarterback than Flacco. I know Flacco has better physical tools, and he’ll make throws look easy that Ryan will never be able to make in a million years. And for that, there are those that will consider him the better player. But I think given what Ryan has had to be in Atlanta from the very beginning, a stabilizing force, that makes him the better overall player. I just believe that if you had put Ryan in Baltimore in 2008, you’d likely to get the same if not better results. If you had put Flacco in Atlanta, I don’t think he would have had the same success. Flacco reached a level the past two years (running no huddle) that Ryan was doing Day One.

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I’m not sure if this is my final takeaway from the Falcons 2013 draft, but I the more I look at it, the more I like it. At least if judging on this lone criteria, that being that the Falcons targeted athletes.

My main takeaway from the Falcons loss against the 49ers this past January was that the 49ers were clearly a better team. I had been hopeful that the Falcons could get off to a fast start which could negate that somewhat. Because I knew that over the course of four quarters, the 49ers were just a better team, with more athletes that could dominate the game physically in the trenches as well as at the offensive skill positions.

So when I look at the 2013 draft, I see the Falcons appearing to be targeting more athletes than normal. Players like Robert Alford, Malliciah Goodman, and Levine Toilolo really epitomize that in that all three I would consider players with a lot more athletic upside than polish as of today. One could label all three projects, which is something the Falcons haven’t seemed to target in their previous five drafts under Thomas Dimitroff.

I don’t think those three players or any of the Falcons rookies this year really would slant things in the Falcons favor if they were to meet the 49ers again, but it’s a step in the right direction.

Which leads me to my next point, which is what are the expectations for the Falcons 2013 season. I know there are many within the fanbase that expect the Falcons to get over the hump and into the Super Bowl in 2014. You won’t count me among them.

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The 2013 NFL Draft was held this past weekend, and as usual it was an intriguing affair. I told my brother, who did not watch one minute of the draft mainly because his wife detests football, that this year’s draft was much like recent NBA Drafts meaning that in future years the 2013 draft class won’t be particularly memorable with its star appeal. Not to say this draft won’t produce good or even great NFL players, because every draft does, at least everyone that I can recall. But as we often heard over the weekend, this was a draft in which the linemen were front and center. Try as they might, ESPN and NFL Network did their best to insert as much “star appeal” as possible by spending as much time as possible talking about this quarterback class and Manti Te’o.

The media desperately wanted to talk about those players, but ultimately I think the quarterbacks and Te’o will be largely forgotten in the NFL. Ultimately the best you’re going to hope from the group of quarterbacks drafted this year is that they produce a Matt Schaub or David Garrard-caliber passer. They may be competent to good starter, but the only time they’ll be really discussed by the media by and large is to talk about how they aren’t great.

Also, it’s not that I doubt Te’o will be a good NFL player, it’s just that his infamous catfishing incident may ultimately eclipse his NFL career. I think Te’o probably winds up playing a decade in the NFL, most of it as a starter. But I think he winds up being comparable to players like Curtis Lofton or Lofa Tatupu, capable starters that their respective team likes, but are rarely mentioned among the best in the league.

I know it’s unrealistic to think that I could turn on league’s flagship channel or the Worldwide Leader in Sports, and expect them to spend hours talking about the greatness of Luke Joeckel, Eric Fisher, Dion Jordan, or any of the players at “blue collar” positions. But there were really good players in this draft and none them played quarterback or middle linebacker for Notre Dame, but you wouldn’t know that from watching the television coverage as they never went more than fifteen minutes without mentioning one of those lesser players.

My final comments on the draft before I start to discuss the Falcons picks specifically is that I do think it’s interesting that quarterbacks did not get pushed up the board. I talked about that in an earlier column this off-season. And at that time, it was difficult to fathom that there wouldn’t be any Top 10 selections at the quarterback position. I compared it to the 2011 class, where a number of lesser prospects went high in the draft and ultimately none of those teams are better for it. I still think the passers did get pushed up the board, but not as far as they normally do. So I tip my hat to NFL teams for not reaching too far on subpar passers. We’ll see if this trend continues next April.

But onto the Falcons…

I liked the Falcons draft. It’s not very sexy, nor is it one that I think people will look back and say made a huge impact on the team. But it’s a solid group of players. I think moreso than in recent drafts, the Falcons seemed more intent on looking at players that had higher ceilings. I think a hallmark of some of the Falcons post-2008 drafts has been targetting players with high floors, but relatively low ceilings. I think the opposite happened this year.

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It’s now less than two weeks until the 2013 NFL Draft kicks off on Thursday night, April 25. In past years I would have for the top prospects in the draft. I have not done that this year. My job had me traveling a lot in the fall, so I didn’t watch as much college football as normal. Once the winter hit, and now that we’ve rolled into spring, I have a lesser workload but not by a huge margin. And since I typically do a poor job managing my time anyway, I did not get to make up for lost time as much as I would have liked.

So this year, there aren’t going to be many scouting reports on draft prospects. At least not before the draft. After the draft, I intend fully to dive into breaking down the players that the Falcons draft. Although again, because my workload is likely to be hectic that might take a month or so especially if the Falcons wind up making eleven picks.

But I do hope that in the next ten days that I will put a few scouting reports online of some of the players that the Falcons are potentially targeting in the early rounds of the draft. I really want to look at some cornerbacks as well as some pass rushers because I feel that these are the most likely players the Falcons will come away with in Round One.

We have five years of drafts under Thomas Dimitroff to gauge in order to try and guess who the Falcons are taking with their top pick this year. Frankly, that’s all it really is: educated guessing, because none of the many bloggers around the interweb that cover the Falcons really know what is going to happen.

To be honest, I’m not very good with guessing who the Falcons will take with their top pick. In 2008, I was split on Glenn Dorsey and Matt Ryan. That was understandable to a degree because it was Dimitroff and Mike Smith’s first draft, and their tendencies were unknown. In hindsight, it’s obvious why they ultimately chose Ryan but at the time it seemed like a toss-up. Mike Smith was a defensive coach, and Dorsey was widely hailed as the best interior pass rusher since Warren Sapp. And many weren’t high on Ryan. I can proudly thump my chest, and say I wasn’t one of them. I wrote this about Ryan in that 2008 draft guide:
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Brent Grimes is gone. Falcon fans should lament, although I’ve seen quite a few that are not. Are the Falcons defense doomed without Grimes? No. But they will miss him. How much remains to be seen. It seems very likely that cornerback will be one of the team’s top two picks in this year’s draft.

Will that mean that the Falcons won’t sign another player between now and then to help them at cornerback? No. I think it is possible, although I’m not sure I’d say it’s a likelihood. What is a likelihood is that the Falcons will let the market come to them. We haven’t received the details of Osi Umenyiora’s contract yet. But it was reported that $5 million of his deal was guaranteed, and according to other reports that encompassed his first-year salary. Given the way that the Falcons usually negotiate their contracts, it’s likely that guaranteed money includes his first-year base salary as well as an initial signing bonus. How that breaks up is unknown, but more than likely it will result in a cap hit in 2013 that is between $3 and $4 million. Regardless of where it falls on that spectrum, it means that the Falcons cap situation is relatively tight. I’ve calculated that if the Falcons don’t trade any of their picks, they will need roughly $5.65 million to sign all of them. From the cap numbers I have, if Umenyiora’s 2013 cap hit is $3.5 million, that gives the Falcons roughly $3.5 million in cap space for the season. Not enough to sign the rookies.

Now after the draft the Falcons will almost certainly get to work on extending Matt Ryan’s contract. When that deal is done, that should give the team at least $5-6 million in cap space, giving them them enough to sign their rookies and also have some room left over as insurance in the event of injuries. But in the mean time, the Falcons will likely be frugal with their spending. And that will likely result in the Falcons letting the cornerback market come to them. They probably won’t make huge efforts to pursue any free agent corners between now and the draft. But if some come to them at the right terms, then I believe we should see the Falcons add a veteran stopgap at cornerback before the draft. The right terms likely will be a one-year, veteran minimum deal that will include a very modest signing bonus (less than $100,000). If a veteran corner is willing to accept such terms, then he may be a Falcon. If not, then the Falcons will be content to try and answer their problems at the position solely via the draft.

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Part 2:

Allen Strk joins me to discuss the upcoming free agent market. We look at some possible signings the Falcons could make including pass rushers like Dwight Freeney, Osi Umenyiora, Cliff Avril, and Michael Bennett. We also look at possible running back options such as Steven Jackson and Ahmad Bradshaw, and whether improving the running game should be a priority. You’ll also hear ourr thoughts on Matt Ryan’s looming monster contract, as well as our opinions of some other Falcon players like Jacquizz Rodgers, Peria Jerry, and Vance Walker.

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Duration: 35 minutes

Part 3:

Allen and I finish our discussion of free agency, by looking at some of the defensive tackles and tight ends the Falcons could be looking at both in March and April. We’ll break down what we see are the off-season’s priorities, as well as look ahead to 2013 to see what competition the Falcons will face and whether it culminates with a Lombardi Trophy in Flowery Branch.

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Duration: 29 minutes

Allen writes for TJRSports.com as well as the Bleacher Report. His twitter handle is: @Allen_Strk.

 

If you have any questions and comments, you can hit us up on Twitter, post in the forums in the podcast thread, or drop an e-mail at: pudge@falcfans.com.

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With much of the details of Joe Flacco’s new record-breaking $120.6 million contract being released on Sunday night, we now have a blueprint for what Matt Ryan’s new deal will look like. The only real question is at what point does Ryan sign on the dotted line.

I wrote earlier that I figured that Ryan would be signed sometime this summer because I did not expect Flacco’s deal to get done so quickly. Kudos to Ozzie Newsome & Co. for speeding up the process. The Ravens have a number of good free agents that they need to re-sign this off-season, and avoiding the monster $20 million franchise tag that Flacco would have incurred should allow them to keep many of them. Now, Flacco’s cap hit in 2013 is reportedly around $6.8 million, essentially freeing up $13 million in cap space.

When the Ryan deal gets done, it’s likely that the Falcons will also reap cap benefits, although I’m not sure as much. Ryan is set to count $12 million against this year’s salary cap, but I would expect the first year cap hit of his new deal to be in the ballpark of Flacco, which probably means somewhere around $5-6 million savings.

The interesting things about Flacco’s deal are the payouts in Year 1 ($30 million), Year 2 ($51 million) and Year 3 ($62 million). The latter two figures exceed that of Drew Brees, although Brees was paid $40 million in the first year of his new deal. $52 million of Flacco’s contract is guaranteed, while the number was reportedly $60 million for Brees. Remember, Brees is represented by Tom Condon, who also represents Matt Ryan. It’s in Condon’s best interest to try and reclaim the biggest contract awarded to a quarterback, although that clearly may not be in the Falcons’ best interest. So likely a middle ground will need to be reached. And that could take time. Which makes me believe that we will see Ryan comes to terms later rather than sooner. It may not last until July at this point, but I’m not optimistic that a deal will get done before March 12, when those cap savings could be very beneficial to the Falcons as they shop for new players.

As of Friday, reports were that the Falcons had yet to engage in serious talks with Ryan.

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The other news that the Falcons made on Friday was the release of three veterans in John Abraham, Dunta Robinson, and Michael Turner. The Turner move was expected, and was a long time coming. I was not convinced the Falcons would dump Dunta, as it leaves a pretty large hole at cornerback. Instead, I expected the Falcons to restructure Dunta’s deal to have him return in 2013 at a more cap-friendly price. Abraham was the surprise move, as it had been hinted at but I don’t think anybody expected the Falcons to actually part ways with him. Abraham was the team’s entire pass rush practically, and the team has already proclaimed that improving there will be an off-season priority. So on Friday, the Falcons essentially took a step back in order to take several steps forward.

I really don’t know what the Falcons “plan’ is going forward. I suspect they will be targeting pass rushers early in the draft, but does it mean that they will also be looking for free agents to sign?

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I think it’s a foregone conclusion that at some point in the next six or seventh months the Falcons will sign a long-term extension with quarterback Matt Ryan that makes him one of the highest paid signal callers in the NFL.

If the Falcons can get a deal done with Ryan prior to the start of free agency on March 12, it could free up much needed cap space. Ryan is set to count $12 million against the Falcons cap this year. Given the nature of large contracts that are heavily backloaded, it likely means that cap figure will decrease dramatically in the first year of Ryan’s deal. We’re talking about perhaps $6 million the Falcons could reap immediately. Given how tight the Falcons cap situation is, that $6 million could really come in handy when it come to re-signing their own free agents or signing guys from other teams.

Ryan will likely be joined by Super Bowl MVP and impending free agent Joe Flacco of the Baltimore Ravens and Tony Romo of the Dallas Cowboys in terms of getting brand new contracts this off-season. What is interesting is that Ryan and Romo share the same agent, Tom Condon.

Flacco’s agent Joe Linta made headlines a year ago discussing that he believed his client was then a Top 5 quarterback, which most laughed at. Well a year later now his client is sporting some serious bling, and he certainly has the last laugh. It is now expected that Linta will seek to make his client the highest paid quarterback in the league.

The player who currently holds that title is another Condon client by the name of Drew Brees. Brees signed a five-year deal that averaged $20 million last year with $60 million guaranteed, including $40 million paid at the outset.

When the Falcons drafted Ryan in the final years of the whopping rookie contracts, they gave him a deal that averaged $12 million a year with roughly $35 million guaranteed, then the highest ever given to a quarterback. The following year, No. 1 overall pick Sam Bradford got $50 million guaranteed on a deal that average $13 million a year. That was followed up in 2010 by Matt Stafford’s contract that averaged about $12 million and had $42 million guaranteed, but also included an additonal $17 million option bonus paid in the second year which was not technically guaranteed, but about as close as you can get. By the way, Condon also represents both players.

Another Condon client, Peyton Manning signed a five-year deal with the Broncos last March that averaged $19 million per year with guarantees that will reach $60 million assuming Manning doesn’t fail a physical between now and March.

I’m trying to illustrate the landscape in which Ryan comes in for his future contract negotiations. Ryan has more regular season wins than any other quarterback in the last five seasons with 56. In fact, that is the most ever for any quarterback in NFL history in his first five seasons. That is certainly going to be a point that Condon makes during negotiations. Flacco isn’t far behind him with 54 regular season wins, but throw in his 9 postseason wins, it pushes him to 63 total over the past five years, the most in the league.

But Ryan isn’t far behind when you factor in postseason success, tying with Aaron Rodgers for 57 total. That outpaces Brees (56 total), Tom Brady (53), Ben Roethlisberger (53), Eli Manning (52), and Peyton Manning (51). Again, these are going to be key points for Condon in negotiations.

Brees was 33 when he signed his deal, and Manning was 36. Ryan will be 27 or 28 when he signs his deal. His current success coupled with his age that assumes continued success in the future is going to cause Condon to seek deals that exceed those of his two previous clients.

So it all brings us back to the question of whether this will help the Falcons get a deal done with Ryan sooner rather than later in order to reap the immediate cap benefits.

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Well the 2013 season has finally come to a close and one of my preseason Super Bowl picks won it all. Sure, I picked the Packers to ultimately triumph over the Ravens but as far as I see it, that’s a very minor, trivial detail.

The younger generation has now gotten seemingly an unprecedented run of good Super Bowls. I just turned 30 little more than two weeks ago, so if my “Back in my day…” talk sounds a little goofy, then I apologize. But I watched my first Super Bowl in 1991 (or at least the first one I remember), which featured the infamous Scott Norwood missed FG that ended the Bills best hope at winning a Super Bowl. And my eight-year old self thought that meant all Super Bowls were tightly contested. But then what proceeded for the rest of the 90s was a bunch of blowouts.

After that initial Super Bowl, it wouldn’t be until 6 years later when the Broncos and Packers scrapped that I got a compelling Super Bowl. Since then, we’ve had more good Super Bowls that were relatively closely contested than not. In fact, it’s been 6 years since we’ve had a Super Bowl that I didn’t feel like was a compelling game (Colts-Bears). And before that, the only other one the past ten years was the Bucs-Raiders game in 2003.

Basically I’m saying you younger whippersnappers have been spoiled. If you started watching Super Bowls in the 80s and 90s, you basically knew that more than likely you were going to get a lopsided blowout.

As for the game itself, I am happy that the Ravens won. I’m even more happier that the 49ers seemingly got their just desserts as their season ended on a controversial no-call on a defensive holding on 4th down.

I’m also glad we’re not going to hear the Colin Kaepernick hype this off-season. I don’t have a beef against Kaepernick. I liked him a ton at Nevada, and watching him run the Pistol at Nevada for all four years was one of the better sights of college football. But I don’t like what he represents in terms of the media hype. I remember when Tom Brady won his first Super Bowl in 2001, won MVP despite an extremely mediocre performance, all the hype that followed him. Look, I love me some Brady nowadays. But in truth, that Tom Brady didn’t begin to exist until 2004 or 2005. Prior to that, he was one of the more overrated quarterbacks in the league.

And I had the same fear with Kaepernick if the 49ers had won. Because he played on a stacked team and he managed to win under almost identical circumstances as Brady in 2001, that he would suddenly be propelled into the “elite” quarterbacks group. I hate how quarterbacks are judged by team success. I was also going to hate on this hype that is to come from the mobile quarterbacks. Yes, we have a number of mobile quarterbacks in the NFL, and many of them had a great deal of success this past year. But I again want people to know that this is nothing new. Nothing has changed in the NFL to suggest that mobility is going to be the significant plus going forward that the media is making it out to be. Vince Young and Michael Vick also had great success early in their careers. But the league adjusted, as it always does. Becuase neither of them could make the strides as pocket passers, they became increasingly mediocre.

The same could happen with this new crop of mobile quarterbacks, namely Kaepernick, Russell Wilson, Robert Griffin, and Cam Newton. I think of that group, Griffin stands the best chance to break out of the mold because I believe he has all the necessary tools to be an excellent pocket quarterback. I think Wilson is always going to struggle throwing from the pocket due to his lack of height. I just don’t think he’s ever going to be the sort of QB that can drop back 40 or 50 times per game and sling it and the Seahawks can consistently win that way. Thus he will need to be supported by a complementary if not top-notch ground attack. Kaepernick and Newton don’t have any issues with size, but I don’t think they have the ideal pocket skills or accuracy to be great doing that either. I think they will also need to have complementary ground attacks.

I’m curious to know what the talk on Flacco will be after this season. Is he going to be propelled into being a so-called elite quarterback now that he has hardware? Probably. I don’t think he deserves it, but I didn’t think Eli Manning deserved it last year. My definition of what makes an elite quarterback or an elite player at any position, is when you don’t have to go out of your way to argue whether that player is the best player ever.

If you were to ask me who I thought was the best safety in the NFL, and I answered Troy Polamalu, you would probably not give me a perplexed look. If I answered Ed Reed, or Adrian Wilson, or going back some years with Brian Dawkins, you’d probably not try to argue with me over that. But if I said Eric Weddle, Earl Thomas, Malcolm Jenkins, or Danieal Manning, you might give me a quizzical look. Now in the case of Weddle and Thomas, they may soon claim elite status since Polamalu, Reed, Wilson don’t seem long for this league and certainly haven’t played at that elite level the past year or so.

Is Flacco an elite quarterback? No. But he’s a franchise guy. How I usually categorize quarterbacks is to basically place them into four tiers. If you’re in the top two tiers, then you’re a franchise guy. Which basically means your team should be willing to build around you for at least 5-7 years, if not up to 15 years. Here’s a basically breakdown of how the tiers work:

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The Falcons have needs at every position, or at least they have room to improve their roster across the board. I want to look at every position group to see what areas where the Falcons can improve. Let’s start first with quarterback.

It is expected that the Falcons will begin contract extension talks with Matt Ryan at some point this off-season. Ryan is signed through the 2013 season, and thus the Falcons don’t want to get into a situation next off-season where they are in a protracted contract stalemate with Ryan. If the Falcons can get Ryan locked up to a long-term deal, then it will alleviate many of the issues they have at this position.

Next on the Falcons to-do list is going to be addressing the No. 2 spot on the roster. Luke McCown was signed just before the start of the regular season to replace Chris Redman and John Parker Wilson, both of whom struggled in the preseason. McCown can be a competent reserve when the conditions around him are ideal, namely when he has a ground game, playmakers at wide receiver, and doesn’t have to play from behind. Those conditions could be met in Atlanta if the Falcons can get their ground game back on track but they don’t want to be in a situation where McCown will be asked to start multiple games in the event of a Ryan injury.

McCown is a free agent, and he could be retained fairly easily. It’s unlikely he’ll get anything more than a one-year, near-minimum deal on the open market, so if the Falcons offer the same it’s likely he’ll remain in Atlanta. But the Falcons need at quarterback will be bringing in more competition. Dominique Davis will represent the third quarterback on the roster and will be in the competition, but the team needs a fourth arm. Traditionally the Falcons have relied on undrafted talent to fill this part of the depth chart, but it might be time that the team delves into free agency or the draft to try and find more than your run of the mill undrafted prospect.

The ideal fit for the Falcons will be someone that is somewhat familiar with Dirk Koetter’s scheme. But also from a skill standpoint, they probably want to look for someone that is comfortable with a vertical passing game. It remains to be seen whether or not the Falcons running game makes significant strides next year, and thus the team may still be reliant on the explosiveness of their passing game to potentially win games if Ryan were to go down. There’s an obvious candidate that fits both requirements: David Garrard.

While the Falcons could look for talent in the middle to late portion of the draft, the presence of Davis on the roster probably mitigates their desire for another young, developing quarterback. Davis possesses a big arm and mobility, which if he can polish up his mechanics and become more comfortable making his progressions could develop into a capable No. 2.

Whether the Falcons choose to retain McCown or move in another direction, the key is that they bring in some arms that can bolster competition in camp. Whoever fills the backup spot in 2013 should be in for an open, intense competition, and settling for retaining an average McCown and green Davis won’t be enough to provide that.