A.J. Terrell is here and it is time to welcome him with open arms

A.J. Terrell was the guy that the Atlanta Falcons claim that they wanted to the entire night and who they zeroed in on heading into the draft.

If that is indeed the case, they got their man. Regardless of what anyone has to say, they targeted a guy that they wanted and were able to grab him without making any moves up the draft. The issue becomes, why did they think they had to move up to grab him in the first spot?

Atlanta Falcons general manager Thomas Dimitroff stated that the team thought at one point they were going to have to move up between picks 9 and 12 to be able to draft A.J. Terrell. Look, we get it, all the available information to the public is very different than what the NFL teams individually use to assess players.

But with all the given information out there, it is hard to imagine anyone drafting Terrell higher than the Atlanta Falcons did. There is a rumor that the Raiders were going to take him at 19, so the Falcons could not move back in the round like many assume, but we hear a lot of nonsensical stuff around the draft, why is that the rumor everyone chooses to believe?

That answer is simple. We choose to hang our hats on that because it makes us feel better about the pick our team just made and it was a pick that most of us disagreed with.

A.J. Terrell will be a starter at some point in this league and despite what haters will tell you, he was not terrible in college, nor did he have a bad game against LSU in the national title game. If you actually go back and watch, he was step for step with Jefferson, and Burrow just put the ball in the one place the Terrell could not go get it.

We all know that there is no defense for a great throw. Sure, A.J. Terrell was beaten in coverage throughout his career, but every defensive back has been. Even the greats like Deion Sanders and Darrelle Revis. They were greats because it happened few and far between. The same could be said for Terrell in college, he was not beaten often.

Hopefully, the fan base will welcome him to the brotherhood and not allow their disappointment with a general manager to affect the way that they receive him. As a hometown Atlanta kid, he is happy to be home and as Atlanta Falcons fans, we want more players to want to be here.