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Dimitroff takes Falcons on wild ride to Jones




By Michael Silver, Yahoo! Sports7 hours, 0 minutes ago

At 3:30 Thursday morning, Falcons general manager Thomas Dimitroff sat up in bed, opened his eyes wide and felt his heart rate rise.

Having worked out the tentative framework of a blockbuster draft deal the night before with Tom Heckert, his Browns counterpart, Dimitroff suddenly was overcome by an anxious thought: When we draft Julio Jones(notes), do we have a Falcons jersey and hat to give to him when he walks across the stage?



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A bit later, Dimitroff really began to feel panicked. After turning on his computer and reading a report that the Patriots had spoken to the Browns about trading up to acquire the No. 6 overall selection, with ex-Alabama wideout Jones as a possible target, Dimitroff’s spirits sunk. To calm his nerves, he decided to go off the grid.

Leaving his phone and iPod at home, Dimitroff hopped on his Colnago road bike just after sunrise and spent the next hour and 15 minutes zooming around the hilly streets near his Buckhead home, wondering whether the bold move he planned for the first night of the 2011 draft would come to fruition.

“There were so many waves of emotion those last couple of days before the draft, and I was all over the place that morning,” Dimitroff recalled Saturday night. “I went to bed thinking it was 75-25 that we’d do the deal, and it was maybe 25-75 by the time I finished the ride. Starting with the 27th pick and wanting to move up that high, it’s incredibly difficult to find a suitor. I was really unsure.”

About an hour into Thursday night’s first round, Dimitroff engaged in the GM’s equivalent of the Valparaiso Cerro Abajo, aka The Scariest Bike Ride on Earth. In an effort to give young Pro Bowl quarterback Matt Ryan(notes) another weapon and push his talented team into championship contention, Dimitroff sent five picks to the Browns – the Falcons’ first-, second- and fourth-round selections this year and first- and fourth-round choices in 2012 – to snag Jones sixth overall.

Though draft trades are common, this was an unusually aggressive move which, for better or worse, will help define Dimitroff’s legacy. Though the former Patriots scouting director has twice been voted the NFL’s executive of the year since joining the Falcons in 2008, Dimitroff knows he’ll be pummeled publicly if Jones turns out to be a bust.

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