I am not an advocate for losing. Losing is a practice in the NFL that becomes cultural. Once an organization becomes a consistent loser, it’s incredibly difficult to change that atmosphere. Think about Oakland, Jacksonville, Tampa Bay and Washington. Those teams consistently lose to the point that a winning season feels like a freakish anomaly.
With that being clearly stated, the Falcons are in a precarious situation. At 5-7 and in the worst division in NFL history, the team sits in first place and faces only one challenger in the New Orleans Saints. Winning the division at 7-9 would allow the Falcons to host a playoff game and possibly save the jobs of Head Coach Mike Smith and General Manager Thomas Dimitroff. For a season that’s seen its ups and downs, that would be progress in the right direction.
But as I steal for Hall of Fame Coach Bill Parcells, “there’s another side to that pancake.” Clearly the biggest issue with this Falcons team is a lack of top-end defensive talent…and overall depth. Looking at the big picture, winning this NFC South will hurt the Falcons in terms of grabbing starting quality defensive talent in the 2015 NFL Draft. For the sake of argument, let’s say the Falcons were to finish this season with a record of 7-9. Maybe that would win the division, maybe it wouldn’t depending on the outcomes for the Saints. But here are a few things to consider:
The Detroit Lions picked 10th overall in the 2014 Draft after going 7-9.
If the Falcons don’t win the NFC South, they are projected to pick between 10th to 13th.
If the Falcons win the NFC South, the highest pick they could have is 21st.
If the Falcons won a home playoff game, the highest pick they could have is 25th.
There are callers that have told me that it doesn’t matter where the Falcons pick because, “They will mess up the pick anyway.” That’s always a possibility. But I want to use this to highlight how draft talent plateaus work. It’s so important that I’m going to type it again: DRAFT TALENT PLATEAUS. Every NFL Draft has them, and pointing them out helps to see the strength of a draft and the importance of your pick. NFL organizations make it a year-round process to grade college players in order to increase their chance of making good picks.
Below is a portion of my Top 50 board from the 2014 NFL Draft. From my film study and grading, I felt there were five elite prospects in the draft. Typically an elite QB stands apart from everyone else. But I didn't have one of those here. I ranked Clowney, Watkins, Matthews, Barr and Mack as the first plateau of talent for this draft.
From 6 to 18, I had a similar rating for that group of players. All of those players having the potential to be NFL starters as rookies. LB CJ Mosley was my final player that carried a first round grade. 6 to 18 was my second plateau of draft talent.
To refresh your memory, this is how the draft ended up playing out:
As you can see, I inserted plateau lines to illustrate the talent plateaus. You can see that Buffalo made the jump into the first talent plateau (9 to 4) by trading a 2015 first round pick to select WR Sammy Watkins. You can also see that once the top 18 players were off the board, teams began to make moves to select specific players who were similarly rated. Essentially, the 2nd round began at pick 19. Miami surprised many by picking RT Ja'Wuan James but he fit a need and carried a grade that wasn't significantly different from the remaining players on the board. You will also notice that after pick 18, the amount of trading greatly increased.
I point all of this out to ultimately say this: the Falcons will cost themselves access to a higher quality defensive player if they happen to win the worst division in NFL history. When you view the draft in terms of the talent plateaus, it becomes very clear that drafting 10th is considerably more advantageous than 21st to 25th.
Is it still possible to screw up a high pick? Sure. It happens all the time. But I've said since 2013 that this is at least a two-year process before the Falcons window may reopen. Having better players is a big part of this thing competing for Super Bowls again.