If you don’t know so already, I’m a die-hard Falcons fan. Naturally, this season has been a bit painful for me but I can’t say I didn’t see it coming. We’re an incredibly overrated team who caught a lot of lucky breaks last year on our way to a 13-3 record and home field advantage.

Most Falcons fans are starting to see the light now. The kool-aid has been put down and people are starting to see flaws. Matt Ryan is NOT an elite quarterback, and never will be. In fact, my good friend Tom Melton just wrote an interesting post about this. Check it out here. Mike Smith is far too conservative and he hasn’t done anything about our incompetent coordinators. But perhaps the biggest misconception about the Falcons is that Thomas Dimitroff is a great drafting GM. After all, he’s won executive of the year twice, surely he’s great right? Not so much.

I’m not a big fan of Dimitroff and he often leaves me scratching my head on draft day. Of course, most Falcons fans don’t share the same opinion as me. Instead, they prefer to drink the kool-aid and think every 6th round pick Dimitroff brings in will be a stud. Opinions are one thing, but you can’t argue facts.

To put things into perspective, I went ahead and studied the 2008, 2009 and 2010 NFL Drafts. While some may say it takes 3 years to grade a draft, and I’m well aware of that, I went ahead and graded every teams pick solely on how the player has performed so far. Not worrying about value, or trades, or which GM made the pick. I simply graded each draft pick on a scale from A to F. I consider picks graded A and B to be solid impact players, which is what you aim for. I took the number of picks graded A or B and divided it by the amount of picks the team had to wind up with a “hit rate”, or how often that team drafted a solid player. I started in 2008 because that’s when Dimitroff was hired. I stopped in 2010 because there’s no way we can make any conclusions about the 2011 draft class so far.

Now before you scream that we can’t judge 2010 picks, keep in mind that this is the case for all teams, so it’s not like anyone is getting the short end of the stick. How did I come up with the grades? Well, I consider myself pretty knowledgeable about what goes on around the league and how young players fare. Most of these guys I have watched in college and have kept up with in the NFL. To prevent bias I also confirmed with Pro Football Focus’ ratings. They watch every snap of every play and provide us with information that the average fan has no clue about.

Enough rambling, let’s get to the results.

The highest “hit rate” over those 3 years belongs to the New Orleans Saints with an astonishing 44%. Despite working with only 16 picks they managed to draft 3 great players, and 4 solid players. The Packers we’re second with 34% with the Raiders and Lions close behind.

Here are the full results

1. Saints – 44% – 7/16
2. Packers – 34% – 8/24
3. Raiders – 29% – 6/21
4. Lions – 28% – 7/25
5. Chargers – 26% – 5/19
6. Titans – 26% – 7/27
7. Bengals – 23% – 7/30
8. Chiefs – 23% – 6/26
8. Jets – 23% – 3/13
10. Bucs – 23% – 5/22
10. Cardinals – 23% – 5/22
12. Patriots – 23% – 7/31
13. Giants – 22% – 5/23
13. Seahawks – 22% – 5/23
15. Ravens – 22% – 5/24
16. Jaguars – 20% – 4/20
17. Falcons – 19% – 5/26
18. Browns – 19% – 4/21
19. Bills – 19% – 5/27
20. Texans – 17% – 4/24
20. Vikings – 17% – 3/18
22. Colts – 16% – 4/25
22. Panthers – 16% – 4/25
24. Steelers – 15% – 4/26
25. Rams – 15% – 4/26
26. 49ers – 14% – 3/21
27. Redskins – 14% – 3/22
28. Eagles – 13% – 4/31
29. Cowboys – 13% – 3/24
30. Dolphins – 12% – 3/26
31. Bears – 8% – 2/26
32. Broncos – 7% – 2/28

So there you have it. Dimitroff has a 19% chance of drafting a solid player, good for 17th in the league. The average was 19.4 so Dimitroff was right around average. So much for him being a genius. It’s time people take off the rose-colored glasses and see just how overrated this team is. What we once thought was great, has now turned out to be merely average.