Mike Florio, the founder of Pro Football Talk, can get a bit pessimistic at times. He can also hold grudges and that is exactly what he has done with the Atlanta Falcons.
We all know that the Dirty Birds have made some jaw-dropping moves this offseason. They signed Kirk Cousins to the biggest free agent deal of the year and then took his eventual replacement with the eighth overall pick.
What do these moves tell us? This team is not playing around and doesn't want to go through a rehash of the post-Matt Ryan days.
However, some people seem to not understand this reasoning, specifically Mike Florio who was often critical of the franchise going into the season with Desmond Ridder as their starting quarterback last year. Sounds somewhat hypocritical.
Mike Florio's power rankings has the Falcons at 19
As we always see around this time of the year, the media is putting together their power rankings of all 32 teams in the NFL. These are never correct and sometimes are downright ridiculous.
The leader of Pro Football Talk put the Falcons as the 19th-best team in the league. The reasoning? They took a quarterback with the eighth overall pick. I am not even kidding, that was his entire reasoning. This is all he had to say:
"They'd be even higher if they'd used the eighth overall pick on a player other than Kirk Cousin's replacement."
That is quite the reasoning. It is proof his rankings are based on emotions rather than logic and assessment.
There is so much wrong with his rankings. How does adding a future franchise quarterback (even if you already have your current one) make you a worse team? Sure, they didn't add a first-round pass rusher but there is no guarantee that it would have helped them.
To make the list look even worse he has the Buccaneers ten spots ahead of Atlanta... Why should we take a 9-8 team who is "running it back" seriously? If anything they are a worse team after losing three key defenders: Devin White, Carlton Davis, and Shaq Barrett.
Anyway, the moral of the story, don't trust Pro Football Talk to have any fair assessments of the Falcons anytime soon. I guess Florio is just salty that we stole Kirk Cousins from his team.