Drafting well this weekend is the best way to create optimism for the future. And, given the current state of the Falcons roster and its relation to the salary cap, nailing picks will help the present product a great deal.”Where we’re at currently, from last year to this year, with our cap issues, these draft picks, whether some of them are ready or not, they’re going to have to play,” Smith said Tuesday. “You saw that last year with some of them, where we had a plan and injuries come up and you’ve got to play a guy earlier, or you’re able to be disciplined at certain spots maybe on the back end. Where we’re at, currently for ’22, this draft is obviously big for us.”While there’s a never-ending public debate between drafting for need and the best player on the board — there’s always a slant toward premium positions — those two sides often align when a team’s on the clock. That’ll likely be the case regarding a roster with so many holes. That also means the No. 8 overall selection might not be the position you’ve been demanding they take.It might not be an edge rusher or a receiver. They might go deep in one area, seemingly too light in another while attempting to extract maximum value from each selection.Before ripping one on spec, I invite you to join me in taking a less granular, more wholistic view to these picks and see how they fit into the 2022 product and beyond, with ongoing development as important as immediate impact.You’ll achieve a greater understanding of what Fontenot and Smith are working towards when you look at it that way. And like you’ll see all these picks aren’t designed for 2022, all of next year’s money won’t be spent frivolously and all at one time.”We see that even despite the challenges we had this year, we’re going to like where we are as a team as we step into the year and we’re going to continue to improve,” Fontenot said Tuesday. “There’s never going to be a time that we have a lot of money and we’re going to go out and be reckless. We’re still going to have a process and have discipline and do things the right way.”There is a level of heightened optimism in the Falcons building that, starting with this draft, they’ll do less of what they have to do and more of what they want to do.”With the cap space we’re going to have next year and the draft capital we have now,” Fontenot said in March, “it gets you really excited.”
