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Hold back your joyous tears, the Falcon family got just a little bit bigger today.
Former Rams General Manager Billy Devaney and former Rams scout and player Russ Bolinger are Atlanta's newest player personnel scouts. The two together have a very long history of personnel and scouting experience, and figure to help rebuild our depleted personnel department.
The Falcons official website included the following quote from Dimitroff.
"Billy and Russ are experienced talent evaluators and I am pleased to add them to our personnel department," said Falcons General Manager Thomas Dimitroff. "I have had a great working relationship with Billy over the years and have always respected his approach to scouting. Russ and I worked closely together in Detroit (1996-97) and developed a great professional and personal relationship. I am confident that by adding Billy and Russ we have made our personnel department better."
The Falcons had previously lost great evaluators in both Les Snead and David Caldwell to the St. Louis Rams and Jacksonville Jaguars, respectively.
This off season Dimitroff has added former Kansas City Chiefs General Manager Scott Pioli along with Devaney and Bolinger.
These feel like good moves to me. Dimitroff understands that the way the 2013 season worked out is unacceptable and is ready and willing to make changes to his personnel staff to make sure it doesn't happen again. Clearly there were problems and Atlanta is dedicated to doing something other than more of the same.