It's the cruelest month, people. You gotta get fired up about SOMETHING. And at this point in the season, all we have for fuel is this kind of thing:
Atlanta -- Sources imply a 6'2" guard from the WAC ought to work out with the Titans tomorrow oh I can't believe baseball season only started last week.
But let's see if we can rally up some roots that clutch, some branches that grow. Here's what's happening:
All the players that the Falcons have worked out or are scheduled to work out, grouped by position, with projected rounds in parentheses. If you've ever budgeted rookie scouting points in a Madden franchise, you'll know exactly what you're looking at. After that, we analyze.
LB: Jamar Chanay - Mississippi St. (4-5), Sean Lee - Penn St. (2), Rolando McClain - Alabama (1), Eric Norwood - South Carolina (2-3), Daryl Sharpton - Miami (4-5), Vuna Tuihalamaka - Arizona (5-6), Daryl Washington - TCU (1-2), Sean Weatherspoon - Missouri (1)
DE: Jermaine Cunningham - Florida (3-4), Brandon Graham - Michigan (1), Everson Griffin - Southern Cal (1), Jerry Hughes - TCU (1-2), Brandon Lang - Troy (3-4)
DT: Jared Oldrick - Penn St. (1-2), Corey Peters - Kentucky (4-5), Brian Price - UCLA (1-2)
C: Joe Hawley - UNLV (6-7), Matt Tennant - Boston College (3), J.D. Walton - Baylor (3-4)
WR: Damian Williams - Southern Cal (2), Ryan Wolfe - UNLV (6-7)
G: Mike Iupati - Idaho (1)
TE: Mike Palmer - Clemson (7)
This is neglecting Georgia Tech and Georgia prospects, as FO simply evaluated them all en masse.
So let's see here.
Comrade's drafting a DE and a LB. And as clogged with sticky, bloody talent muck as this draft is, that could mean grabbing Graham in round 1 and finding someone like Daryl Washington has somehow slipped into our talons in round 3. That kind of thing happens every year -- you look up and see Curtis Martin is still around even though it's like the seventh round, and he's put up 1,000 yards annually since like the '70s even though he doesn't get many touchdowns, but you have Corey Dillon around for touchdowns anyway, so you capitalize in an instant, and everybody laughs because it's 2007 right now and Curtis Martin retired in 2005, but nobody ever told you he retired, and it should've been a bigger deal when Curtis Martin retired, I mean he had like 10,000 yards and the New York-centric media usually never shuts up about New York athletes, I mean you knew Curtis Martin retired but it's not like something you obsessed over, because you have a life, and you picked him to be funny anyway, and it happens in non-fantasy football too -- so who knows? Either way, we've got our bases covered by cozying up to a wide range of prospects at these two positions.
Based on the rounds in which these young bucks are slated to appear, one would not be insane to note the DEs are concentrated in the first few rounds while the LBs are smeared and smothered all over. This would suggest we may go DE first, or that we may pick multiple linebackers.
You can also expect us to address center with one of our two third round picks. Matt Tennant is almost too perfect of a storybook pick here. You may not feel comfortable with the fact that Matt Ryan's fingers have graced the undercarriage of a man besides Todd McClure, but let's be adults here. Things happen in college, and Ice is clearly comfortable working closely with Tennant.
Therefore, we may be staring down the barrel of Graham, Tennant, LB (Rennie Curran?), line depth on both sides, a pass-catcher in there somewhere, and then god knows what.
Am I crazy, team? Can we actually learn anything from this kind of stuff, or is April really just that skeletal of a football news month? Who do you think Comrade should work out next? You guys probably think we should keep working out Weatherspoon until he's so worn out he thinks he's at practice, and then we can keep going until he's so zoned we convince him his name is Robert James so he can take the place of the guy on our roster named Robert James and we can shrug and act dumb when Roger Goodell comes around looking for Weatherspoon all mad at us. Do you guys think we should just do that? Did I miss any players we've worked out?
NOTE: This is brickcheney speaking. I changed my SB Nation name to my real name. Onward.