Posted: 11:39 p.m. Thursday, April 25, 2013For the Falcons, being smart is the new normalOtto Greule

Posted: 11:39 p.m. Thursday, April 25, 2013For the Falcons, being smart is the new normalOtto Greule Jr. / Getty ImagesDesmond Trufant, the newest Atlanta Falcon.By Mark Bradley Flowery Branch – Let’s face it. We used to chuckle over this forlorn franchise. The Falcons messed up nearly everything they tried, and when finally they seemed to have gotten it right – making the Super Bowl, drafting Michael Vick – they wound up having a team leader arrested on the eve of the big game and then, years later, watching as the franchise quarterback went to jail. That was in 2007, and that was the time that we who watched abandoned the very last vestige of hope.Since then, the Falcons have gone from strength to strength. The team that had never known consecutive winning seasons has reeled off five in a row. Yes, the Falcons fell 10 yards short of the Super Bowl in January, but they’ll have other chances. Which brings us to Thursday night, to Round 1 of the NFL draft, to the latest example of why the Falcons are the bold Falcons, the driven Falcons, the smart Falcons.They traded up eight spots to take cornerback Desmond Trufant of Washington, and the mood afterward in the building at 4400 Falcon Parkway was positively jubliant. General manager Thomas Dimitroff said his team had “our targeted pick in tow,” and again we marvel at the adroit ways of this adminstration. It sees a task and performs it. It dares to dare.The Falcons could have been no lower than they were when 2007 became 2008: Vick was in prison and head coach Bobby Petrino had bolted to Arkansas after 13 games. But Arthur Blank hired Dimitroff largely on the strength of a webcam interview, and Dimitroff hired Mike Smith away from Jacksonville, and the two have scarely put a foot wrong since.Trufant fills a positional need, but his arrival sends an even stronger message: For all their success these past five seasons, the Falcons are still running flat-out to better themselves. This is everything you’d want in a professional franchise, and it’s everything the Falcons weren’t their first four decades in operation. We used to wonder, for good reason, if this team could ever do anything right. Now it’s the model organization. -- source link
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