The NFL is a less patient place than it’s ever been. The success of the Rams and Buccaneers, and their respective, aggressive, for-today team-building approaches—even if there’s a lot more that’s gone into their construction than that—has led to widespread perception that, in 2022, you can microwave yourself a Super Bowl champion.
Likewise, the Broncos, Packers and others have pushed money into the future, and thrown the sort of caution you’d uniformly see five or 10 years ago to the wind to try and keep up.
And then, you have the Falcons. They aren’t alone in being more deliberate in today’s breakneck environment. The Texans and Lions, to name two more, are similarly laying a foundation over time, in hopes it’ll be built to last.
But in part by design, and in part due to circumstance, second-year Falcons coach Arthur Smith and GM Terry Fontenot are really going through what might look like a first year from the outside in. They dealt away franchise quarterback Matt Ryan. They’ll carry more than $62 million in dead money this year (about 30% of this year’s cap), accounting for five guys no longer in Atlanta, with $56 million of it tied to departed team icons Ryan and Julio Jones.
There will be high draft picks in some of the vacated spots, undrafted free agents in others, and Smith sure knows what you’re thinking, and the narrative (tanking) that’s already being kicked around. His response? More or less—and these are my words, not his—
“You’re trying to win,” Smith says, with a little edge in his voice. “I don’t know what coach goes in there and doesn’t try to win. That’s just insane to me. Now, I know everyone’s at different phases. There’s been a lot of teams crowned in the offseason. But this team’s excited to go out there and compete; that’s what we get paid to do. It’s simple as that.”
Now, Atlanta’s situation isn’t simple.
Still, the way they’re building in today’s environment takes stomach, belief, resolve and, yes, a lot of that dirty word—. And yet, neither Smith nor Fontenot think that it’s going to take a whole lot of losing to make it work. Which makes these guys a fascinating case study in a different way to construct a football operation in today’s NFL.
