Closing the book on the Thomas Dimitroff era in Falcons history

            The Thomas Dimitroff era in Atlanta was certainly a memorable one, for better or worse. This was actually the most successful era in franchise history, as the team had a 113-95 record from 2008 through 2020 when Dimitroff was fired during the season. Dimitroff had some success, most notably in drafting Matt Ryan & Julio Jones, two of the best players in team history, in the first round. It wasn’t all pretty though, as his failures continue haunting this franchise more than two years after his departure. His shortcomings included a handful of contract extensions gone awry, an inability to consistently identify & select talented players via the draft & free agency, and several failures to beef up the trenches on both sides of the football.  Let’s read on to discover why the Dimitroff era is finally over more than two years after his exit.

Painful contract extensions

            Dimitroff’s fatal flaw was that his decision-making always centered around trying to make the team better in the short-term while ignoring the long-term ramifications of his actions. Case and point, the Falcons are left with an outrageous dead cap hit of $77.54M on the books for 2022 after the new regime made several tough business decisions over the past couple of years. That dead cap hit accounts for 37% (!) of the entire $208M salary cap for the Falcons this year. It’s no wonder that the Falcons haven’t been able to field a competitive team & sign free agents. TD would repeatedly sign players to contract extensions & restructure their deals in future years to save money in the short-term while attempting to field competitive teams every single year. The problem is that these processes backloaded the deals, meaning that when the new regime traded or released the players on the deals, they were responsible for paying the hefty leftover balance. LB Deion Jones’ recent trade to the Browns is a good example of this process in action.

Misevaluation of players (draft/free agency)

            Takk McKinley, Vic Beasley, and Sam Baker are some examples of the type of players that Dimitroff routinely drafted in the first round that frequently didn’t pan out for the team. Dante Fowler, Tyson Jackson, and Jon Asamoah are some examples of the type of players that Dimtiroff often signed (and often overpaid for) in free agency that never contributed to the team.  He had the right idea in making multiple attempts at beefing up both lines of scrimmage; however, he repeatedly struggled with selecting the right players to accomplish this huge task. Much in the way that TD’s contract extensions hurt the team down the line, these free agent signings & draft picks gone wrong set the team back well after his Falcons tenure concluded.

Failure to strengthen the trenches

            Anyone who’s frequently watched the Falcons over the past decade knows that we haven’t had an offensive line or pass rush to write home about for quite a loooong time. Dimitroff tried everything he could to fix this issue (draft, free agency, trades, etc.) but his inability to identify talent & scheme fit on the offensive & defensive lines was his Achilles heel. We finally made a Super Bowl appearance in 2016 after fielding a decent offensive line for once. It’s no coincidence that we finally had a great pass rush that year too, with Vic Beasley amazingly leading the league with 16 sacks. One man doesn’t make a team’s pass rush though. That’s one of a myriad of reasons why we lost said Super Bowl, as Beasley was a non-factor.

A couple of greatest hits

            Matt Ryan & Julio Jones carried the Falcons during the Thomas Dimitroff era in Atlanta. Alex Mack, Michael Turner, & Matt Bryant were great free agent signings by our former GM. Other players, like Desmond Trufant, Mohamed Sanu, & AJ Terrell, made huge contributions. We also never lacked for skill position talent from 2008-2020, notably fielding an offense in 2012 that featured Matt Ryan, Tony Gonzalez, Julio Jones, Roddy White, & Michael Turner. Late round success in the draft was another hallmark of this era as the team selected Grady Jarrett (5^th round), De’Vondre Campbell (4^th), & Foyesade Oluokun (6^th) all in the later rounds. For as much crap as I’ve been heaping on Dimitroff, he did have some success with the team.

The bottom line

            Dimitroff probably should’ve been fired much earlier, perhaps as early as when the Falcons handed former head coach Mike Smith his walking papers way back in December 2014. He definitely shouldn’t have hung around after the team’s historic Super Bowl collapse in 2016. That said, he did some good things as GM including drafting Matt Ryan & Julio Jones, trading for Tony Gonzalez, and acquiring Alex Mack, Michael Turner, & Matt Bryant via free agency. His success stories simply weren’t enough to overcome his overwhelming failures at the helm. Think about it this way, the franchise hasn’t had money to spend on free agents in any of the last four years, and we’re finally about to have some money to spend in free agency next offseason. That pretty well sums up Thomas Dimitroff’s ugly tenure with the Atlanta Falcons organization.