After the draft I thought it would be interesting to do a little breakdown of the Falcons’ last 10 drafts and see how they’ve done.

Key points:

· 70 picks over 10 years (average: 7.0 per draft class)

· 37 picks were DEFENSE; 32 picks were OFFENSE; and 1 pick was pure-ST.

· Drafts by the Fontenot/Smith regime: 12 OFFENSE and 11 DEFENSE

· Excluding 2023, 36 of the other 64 picks have been successful in the NFL (56%)

· Only 31 players of the 70 drafted remain under contract by Atlanta.

· Best draft classes (Tied: 2016 / 2018) with 6 of 6 successful players in each.

· Worst draft class (2017) with only 1 of 6 successful players (Kazee).

· Schizophrenic class (2014) – 3 super picks (Matthews/Freeman/Allen) and 6 low-impact players or in some cases busts (Hagemann/Southward/Shembo/Spruill/Smallwood/Starr). After the 3rd round, they only selected players whose last name started with an "S".

Picks per position group (and numbers selected in each round):

CB – 10 --- 1 / 2 / 1 / 3 / 2 / 0 / 1

RB – 8 --- 1 / 0 / 1 / 2 / 4 / 0 / 0

WR – 7 --- 2 / 0 / 0 / 1 / 0 / 3 / 1

WILL – 6 --- 0 / 1 / 1 / 1 / 1 / 1 / 1

OG – 6 --- 1 / 1 / 1 / 1 / 0 / 2 / 0

JACK/EDGE – 5 --- 1 / 1 / 1 / 0 / 1 / 0 / 1

DE – 4 --- 1 / 1 / 1 / 1 / 0 / 0 / 0

DT – 4 --- 0 / 1 / 1 / 0 / 2 / 0 / 0

TE – 4 --- 1 / 0 / 1 / 0 / 1 / 1 / 0

OT – 3 --- 2 / 0 / 0 / 0 / 0 / 0 / 1

OC – 3 --- 0 / 0 / 1 / 1 / 0 / 0 / 1

SS – 3 --- 1 / 1 / 0 / 0 / 0 / 0 / 1

FS – 2 --- 0 / 0 / 0 / 1 / 1 / 0 / 0

MIKE – 2 --- 0 / 1 / 0 / 1 / 0 / 0 / 0

SAM – 1 --- 0 / 0 / 0 / 1 / 0 / 0 / 0

P – 1 --- 0 / 0 / 0 / 0 / 0 / 0 / 1

QB – 1 --- 0 / 0 / 1 / 0 / 0 / 0 / 0

Picks by Grouping:

DB – 15

LB – 14

OL – 12

WR/TE – 11

RB – 8

DL – 8

QB – 1

ST – 1