Georgia Football: Five facts that prove the Falcons do not avoid drafting Georgia players
By Eric Taylor
There are a lot of fans that claim that the Falcons do not like Georgia football players or that the Falcons avoid drafting Bulldogs. Is this true or is it just a misunderstanding?
Georgia football fans are very passionate about their football team. Even to the point of being mad at anyone that does not, or seems to not, love the Bulldogs as much as they do. These fans are very protective of their Georgia players, even to a fault. For proof of this look no further than those Georgia fans that are also fans of the state’s NFL team in Atlanta.
The Bulldog faithful have often said that the Atlanta Falcons do not like to draft Georgia players or they outright just do not like Georgia players. Is there any proof to this narrative? Where did this line of logic come from?
Well, it comes from the fact that Atlanta has only drafted nine former Bulldogs in their history. The last being in 2011. Those nine players are:
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- Ray Jeffords, TE, 1968
- Allan Leavitt, K, 1977
- Scott Woerner, DB, 1981
- Troy Sadowski, TE, 1989
- Mitch Davis, LB, 1994
- D.J. Shockley, QB, 2006
- Martrez Milner, TE, 2007
- Thomas Brown, RB, 2008
- Akeem Dent, LB, 2011
The Falcons have never taken a Georgia player in the first or second round in their entire team history. However, there were three Georgia players taken in consecutive drafts in 2006-08. So that is something.
With that being said, here are five reasons the Falcons do not, willfully, avoid drafting Georgia players.
Fact No. 1: The NFL draft pool is too deep to focus in on one school’s players.
In any given year there are about 300-500 players in the NFL draft. Targeting the five to ten players from a single given college would pigeon-hole you into hoping that one of those players fell to you in each round. The odds of that happening are slim, extremely slim.
The odds of those players fitting a need and actually being worthy of the pick your team is sitting at is even slimmer.