DETROIT — As the hours tick down to The 2024 National Football Selection Meeting, as the late NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle called it, the Atlanta Falcons have an opportunity to set themselves up for supremacy in the NFC South for the short term.
The team’s needs are edge rusher, linebacker, cornerback and quarterback. During his final pre-draft press conference, General Manager Terry Fontenot said he will refer to his draft board, but will take the best player available in the right situation.
“When we talk about best player available, it’s really best player available for us,” Fontenot said. “Because I think sometimes when people hear ‘best player available,’ they’re looking at some of the experts’ lists. But you have 32 different draft boards. They’re probably a little more similar in the top 10, but they can get very different as you go through the draft.”
Many draftniks and observers have the Falcons taking edge rusher Dallas Turner with the 8th overall pick. According to the BetMGM Sportsbook, the odds of that happening are +135 at the time of publication of this story.
Turner ran 4.46 with a 40.5″ vertical at the NFL Combine, the best among edge rushers at the event. He is the reigning SEC Defensive Player of the Year and checks all of the boxes for Atlanta with the 8th pick. UCLA outside linebacker Laiatu Latu has also been considered by many observers as an alternative to Turner, if the Falcons feel the need to go in a different direction.
The bottom line is Atlanta feels they could win now and have the roster to win the NFC South and host their first-ever playoff game inside Mercedes-Benz Stadium in January 2025.
The 2024 NFL Draft begins tonight at 8 p.m. ET with the first round. The second and third rounds are then Friday, starting at 7 p.m. ET, while the fourth through seventh round wraps up Saturday at noon ET. The Falcons currently have eight picks. That can change due to trades throughout tonight’s festivities.
Round-by-round breakdown:
Round 1, Pick 8
Round 2, Pick 43
Round 3, Pick 74
Round 3, Pick 79 (from JAX)
Round 4, Pick 109
Round 5, Pick 143
Round 6, Pick 187
Round 6, Pick 197 (via CLE)
NFL will not wrap up tampering investigations before the NFL Draft
General Manager Terry Fontenot also praised new quarterback Kirk Cousins for his tenacity in rehabbing his injured Achilles’ tendon.
“The excitement about Kirk Cousins is that he’s a multiplier on and off the field,” Fontenot said Tuesday, via the team’s official website. “We know that, so when he gets in the building and in the training room … he truly is (that with) the work that he does.”
With respect to Cousins’s Achilles’, the NFL announced it would not report the findings of their investigations into tampering until after the Draft.
Cousins admitted he had conversations with the Falcons’s head athletic trainer during the negotiating window. Additionally, he spoke with the teamsdirector of player personnel Ryan Pace before the official launch of the league year.
Cousins also was directly involved in recruiting former Bears receiver Darnell Mooney to Atlanta. Lastly, Cousins admitted that Falcons tight end Kyle Pitts had been actively recruiting him for multiple weeks, conduct which becomes a violation if the recruiting happens with the knowledge or at the direction of the team. The ramifications could be losses of multiple draft picks in the 2025 NFL Draft.
However, for tonight’s purposes, Fontenot will select the player available.
“It’s the best player available,” Fontenot said. “But we’re going off of our board and our internal dialogue.”