Atlanta Falcons: The ‘Falcons filter’ should finally be retired

Under owner Arthur Blank, the Atlanta Falcons don’t give second chances to players.

If there was one thing that the Atlanta Falcons are guilty of it’s being too conservative. That mindset has caused the Falcons to lose a lot of games.

The Atlanta Falcons have had their fair share of weaknesses on their team, a few in which it took them forever to find a solution. If the Falcons took more chances when it comes to signing players, they could have found some hidden gems that other teams were able to discover.

For example, look at the Dallas Cowboys.

This offseason, they took a chance on signing Aldon Smith. If you haven’t been paying attention, Smith looks like the best player on that defense. The Cowboys signed Smith to a one-year, $2 million dollar deal and it’s already paying off.

The Atlanta Falcons have to start taking more chances in order to move forward.

The Falcons gave Dante Fowler a three year, $48 million deal and isn’t putting up the numbers that Smith is at this point in time.

The running game for the Falcons hasn’t been good since 2016, the last year they had a 1,000 yard rusher.

The Browns took a chance on signing Kareem Hunt after his eight-game suspension. The Browns gave him 1.1 million dollars for the 2019 season before they signed him to a two-year extension worth $12 million dollars.

The Todd Gurley signing seems to be working out but the Falcons can’t use Gurley as much as they want.

There are numerous players the Falcons have missed out on due to not being aggressive enough and being afraid to take the risk. Since the Falcons have been in salary cap hell for the past few seasons, you would think that maybe they would have tried to take this approach but they haven’t.

This is something the next GM should experiment with. It’s a low-risk, high reward type of situation that the Falcons won’t regret down the line unlike a few of their past signings.