Candidates to replace Thomas Dimitroff as Atlanta Falcons GM

This is the part of the list that Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank should stay away from. What ultimately is going to happen is Blank will spend some of his PSL cash on a search firm to find his new general manager and they will give him several different lists –former GM’s, current GM’s and up and coming GM’s, so we will do that as well.

However, the former general managers are an instant no thank you. These are men and woman that have had several opportunities to prove that they can build teams and may have succeeded at some point, but ultimately failed.

These are former NFL lifers up in age and more than likely do not understand the analytics side of things nor how to properly evaluate talent.

Bill Polian

Left football almost a decade ago and has done TV since. He tried and failed to start an NFL feeder league in the Alliance of American Football. Sure, he drafted Peyton Manning and several other Hall of Famers, but no one would have missed on them.

Polian recently came out and apologized for saying that current Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson was a wide receiver, but I don’t even fault him for that as most coaches, fans, owners and general managers did too.

The game has passed him by and at 76, the Falcons should leave him alone.

Scott Piolo

Pioli obviously was the assistant general manager for the Atlanta Falcons until abruptly quitting during the offseason. There was speculation that he did not agree with some of the moves made by Dimitroff but nothing was ever confirmed by either party.

As an actual general manager for the Chiefs for four seasons, he never made anything happen for that organization. His reputation was more so because of Bill Belichick and not from anything Pioli has ever done himself.

Mike Tannenbaum

Tannenbaum has worked for several NFL teams in a variety of ways – Saints, Jets, and Dolphins. He was fired by the Jets after the 2013 season and late in 2018 was “reassigned” by the Dolphins, in both cases because he is terrible at his job. There is not much good to say about Tannenbaum simply because he was never good at his job and no one knows how he stays employed by any team.