Falcons Should Stay Away From Louis Delmas

Mandatory Credit: Tim Fuller-USA TODAY Sports

That Atlanta Falcons are one of the teams rumored to be interested in Louis Delmas, the recently released safety formerly of the Detroit Lions. His compete level and his locker room leadership are intriguing, but his lack of production on the field and injury risk make him not worth the kind of investment it will take to see him in an Atlanta uniform next season.

Delmas, while vocal in the locker room and by all accounts a positive leader for the Lions, has failed to live up to expectations since Detroit took him in the second round of the 2009 draft. In the end, like it does so often in the NFL, his production on the field just stopped being worth the investment against the salary cap that the team had made in him.

Despite playing in every game last year, Delmas has a degenerative knee condition which often limited him to just one practice per week for the Lions. That risk of future injury should be enough to keep the Falcons from showing too much interest in him.

Atlanta is finally getting back on the right track where it comes to the salary cap. They released two veterans of their own who also weren’t producing enough on the field to warrant their cap numbers, Asante Samuel and Stephen Nicholas. It just wouldn’t make any sense for them tot take over someone else’s overpaid player right now.

Delmas is rumored to have interest from several teams, which usually means that he won’t come at a bargain price. I like the idea of the Falcons targeting good locker room guys to help increase the compete level on the team, but that can’t come at the price of over committing cap dollars to a player with serious injury and productivity questions.