The Falcons are one of the NFL teams least impacted by roster turnover

We all know that the Falcons didn’t have a lot of turnover this offseason. They lost one genuinely important piece in fullback Patrick DiMarco, arguably the league’s best at his position, but otherwise they chiefly cut ties with role players.

What we didn’t necessarily know was how the Falcons were impacted relative to other teams in the NFL, but thanks to this illuminating study from Over the Cap, now we do. They rank Atlanta as the team with the fourth-smallest turnover in the entire league, which would seem to bode well for an 11-5 squad that represented the NFC in the Super Bowl.

Here’s what Over the Cap had to say:

I found the Falcons to be an interesting team. Basically nobody who left the team was looked at as worth being signed by another team. For the most part their free agents and cuts were all situational guys buy generally on a Super Bowl team other teams covet those players and that wasn’t the case here. I would have liked to have seen another player or two defect that was a bigger contributor to get a better feel for how the rest of the NFL views this team, but they clearly have their important pieces intact this year.

This has commonly been the case for the Falcons for years now, where their personnel and coaching talent is coveted and the players they release are not. Tyson Jackson didn’t develop a hot market after leaving Atlanta, and really, DiMarco was the only guy who commanded a good contract. Again, that leaves the Falcons replacing very few major contributors, which is an ideal spot to be in.

The teams that had more significant turnover? Interestingly enough, the Packers, Vikings, Cowboys and Cardinals all show up in the top ten, and all four of those teams figure to be contenders in the NFC. The Cardinals in particular bled some real talent this offseason, and if those teams are impacted by the loss of quality veterans, you can’t help but see that as a boon for teams like the Falcons, Seahawks, and Eagles who are gunning to be among the conference’s elite in 2017.