Current Release: September 11th, 2007 | Vol. XXIV Iss. 10

A new hope via the draft

BY Ben Giles

brgiles1@vwc.edu

I can only imagine Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank’s elation when his team selected Boston College quarterback Matt Ryan with the third overall pick in the NFL Draft.

Nah nah nah nah, nah nah nah nah, hey hey hey, goodbye!

Goodbye to Michal Vick, dog-fighting charges, and lengthy lawsuits; goodbye to Bobby Petrino, abandoning your players midseason, and shady coaching decisions; goodbye to year after year of negatives.

Of course I don’t know what was going on in Blank’s mind, but there was bound to be some excitement in the Falcons organization this past weekend. Matt Ryan is here.

Ryan symbolizes a shift in the direction of the organization, a changing of the guard. They tried that with Vick in 2001, trading up to draft the supremely talented but troubled star from Virginia Tech, hoping a new breed of quarterback could change the organization’s losing ways. In some regards, Vick achieved that. In other forms, he only greatened the burden on the Falcons’ backs.

Vick couldn’t bring the one true form of deliverance to his team: playoff success. Enter Bobby Petrino, wonder-coach from the college ranks, a quarterback guru whose mission was to help take Vick to the next level.

The Falcon’s intentions turned into a snowballing disaster. Vick’s legal trouble brought the team and the NFL its worst publicity in years, and Petrino decided it wasn’t worth sticking around a sinking ship. He bailed midseason, leaving the team in disarray.

If any team needed a facelift, it was the Falcons.

So regardless of how successful Ryan is as a quarterback, he at least fills the role of the savior of Atlanta. The city needed a rebound.

That’s the hope of the NFL draft, though we shouldn’t necessarily expect great things from Ryan, or for that matter, any of the first round picks. Despite all the time, effort and research put into preparing for the draft, teams are basically performing guesswork. Who knows how these players’ careers will pan out? The number one overall pick, tackle Jack Long from Michigan, could be a bust like a recent offensive lineman picked high in the draft: Robert Gallery, who now plays poorly for the Oakland Raiders.

In a draft where quarterback extraordinaire Tom Brady can be drafted in the sixth round, nobody can really claim they know how a certain player will perform.

But no one denies that the Falcons got the man they wanted. And no matter how his career may go, they’re not about to let a little thing like realistic expectations stop them from celebrating the end of an awful era and the beginning of what they hope will be a shiny new one. Ryan represents the future, and the Falcons are ready to leave behind a past full of Vick in a cloud of dust.

In a cell in Leavenworth, Kansas, Vick is spending his days in prison, and can’t be released until July 2009. He’s already been convicted on Federal charges, and on June 27, the state of Virginia will bring its own charges against the maligned star. Things aren’t looking up for Vick.

They were in 2001, when he was drafted by the Falcons.

And they are once more for Atlanta.