Atlanta Falcons: No time for fools in April

Unlike many of our brother NFL sites at FanSided, Blogging Dirty chose not to participate in any weird April Fools type post in regards to the Atlanta Falcons.

Why? The answer is quite simple actually; since the Atlanta Falcons second half collapse of Super Bowl 51, we have been living in one big April fool’s day and honestly, we are tired of all the fooling around.

April fool’s is something that you should have stopped doing when you obtained your driers license, you know when you were supposed to become more responsible. This is not to say you can’t prank people or make others laugh, because you can and should but to designate one specific day to do so, is absurd.

I have lived by what the great late Coach Jimmy Valvano stated this during his final ESPY’s appearance:

"“Number one is laugh—you should laugh every day. Number two is think—you should spend some time in thought. And number three is, you should have your emotions moved to tears—it could be happiness or joy. But think about it: If you laugh, you think, and you cry, that’s a full day"

From coaching hires, bad draft picks and odd free agent signings, it’s been groundhog day in Flowery Branch for the last couple years. The frustrating part is all of us thought this stretch of ridiculousness was over after this team brought in pieces like Alex Mack and drafted players like Deion Jones and Grady Jarrett.

That said, I am not sure how you laugh about the situation we are in as Falcons fans. We have one of the best rosters top to bottom in the National Football League; we have arguably one of the best wide receiver to ever play the game, a first ballot hall of fame QB in Matt Ryan and several pieces on the defense that would start for all of the other 31 teams in the league.

Yet, we have had collapse after collapse in big moments.

The Falcons have had the same need going back six drafts – trench play. Blogging Dirty has written several articles on how good Thomas Dimitroff has been at drafting specialists and has been one of the worst among NFL general managers when it comes to drafting the big guys up front. It takes a lot of talent to be that damn bad at evaluating talent on the offensive and defensive line. One would think when you have drafted that badly at those spots, you would take the time to re-evaluate your evaluation process – including bringing in someone with a much better record of accomplishment in that area.

All of that said, at least its April and we can spend the next 23 days hoping that like his 2016 Draft class, Dimitroff gets this draft class right.