Maybe you hated how the Falcons spent their Round 1 pick. If so, you weren't alone. CBS Sports graded their selection a C-plus. Yahoo Sports and SI.com gave it a flat C. Pro Football Focus marked it a D. If this were a real class, the card bearing Keanu Neal's name would bear the note, "See me afterward."
About here, a contrarian feels compelled to ask: If this is Dan Quinn’s defense and Dan Quinn’s roster, mightn’t Dan Quinn have a better idea of his needs than you or Yahoo? Isn’t a coach who’s essentially the director of football operations entitled to pick the guy he wants?
Neal is a strong safety. In Quinn’s Cover 3 defense, the strong safety cannot be ordinary. Think Kam Chancellor of Seattle, which was Quinn’s previous posting.
ESPN's Scouts Inc. rated Neal the 44th-best player in this class. PFF rated him 176th. The Falcons took him with the 17th pick. If madness this turns out to be, be advised that there's method to it.
Said Quinn, speaking Friday: “This position in our defense is a huge one. (Strong safeties have) got to have tackling instincts to play at the line of scrimmage like a linebacker but then cover (Carolina’s Greg) Olsen and the tight ends. If we were playing all ‘34’ and he was a half-field player, it’d be different. This player for us is like an enforcer at the line of scrimmage. If we want a fast and physical team, we have to add physical players.”
Then: “Nose tackle might be a first-round position for somebody else, and I respect that, but it may not be for us. Not every team values players the same way. … But certain guys got cool stuff and you say, ‘That’s how he’d play in our system.’ ”
In Neal, Quinn sees a guy with the cool stuff. Quinn knew him from having recruited him, though the coach was gone from Florida before Neal enrolled. “I watched every game,” Quinn said. “It just kept becoming so clear: ‘Look at the physicality.’ We wanted to make sure that the players we were adding had that physical element to them.”
Some Falcons fans hoped for a linebacker: Reggie Ragland of Alabama or Myles Jack of UCLA. We note that Quinn’s defense isn’t like other defenses. (We also note that neither Ragland nor Jack was taken in Round 1.) There are three key positions, none of them linebackers — or defensive tackles. “They don’t do as many jobs,” Quinn said of those positions.
What positions do matter? “There’s the ‘Leo,’ the pass rushers who have elite quickness and burst, a guy who can run 4.5 and haul ass. At corner we like guys who have length, but they don’t have to (run) 4.3. If you’re tall, you can make a play on somebody who’s shorter, even though you’re not as fast.”
Then: “Length outside, tackling and physicality at safety and speed at pass rusher. Those are the three positions that have the most uniqueness in the way we’d like to play.”
The Falcons have a quick edge rusher in Vic Beasley Jr., last year’s Round 1 pick, and an excellent cornerback in the 6-foot-but-rangy Desmond Trufant. They had nobody like Neal until Thursday night. (And they did take a linebacker in Friday’s Round 2: Deion Jones of LSU.)
A four-time Pro Bowler, Chancellor was a Round 5 pick (133rd overall) in 2010. “We got Kam later,” Quinn said, “but if you went back now, would John (Schneider, the general manager) and Pete (Carroll, the coach) draft him in the first round? You bet they would. Because of the style they play.”
Then this: “I wish some other people could understand: If we were a half-field safety team, then he wouldn’t be the right fit. But if you told me, ‘I want a physical guy who’ll knock the hell out of people’ … well, I know what that looks like. And he’s now in our building.”
Dan got his man, though Neal mightn’t have been your man. Then again, this isn’t your defense. It’s Quinn’s.
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