The NFL Trade Deadline is literally less than 24 hours away so naturally all of our focus here with the Falcons is “who’s going to be traded?”
Names like Desmond Trufant, DeAndre Campbell and Vic Beasley have all come up over the past week as a potential trade causality.
However, with all the negative things on the field and trade distractions off the field I believe we have forgotten about a very important issue that rears its ugly head on every bad football.
It’s called player trust and commitment to the organization.
We tend to just assume that most guys are Wiley Ol’ vets who collect massive paychecks and hope for next season, but there are also young players on any losing team who have their mindset shifted from wins and losses to stats and contract extensions.
Now, let me just say this, I had not heard of any young Falcon being upset with the direction of the team so far this year until I heard this interview clip with Calvin Ridley.
Our own Falcons pre and post-game host Paul Crane was interviewing him last week and asked a very interesting question. Take a listen:
Did you hear that? Did you hear his tone? His demeanor? To me, it didn’t exactly sound like a guy who’s excited to be where he is.
But wait, don’t just take one sound bite as proof. Shortly after the Falcons loss yesterday. NFL Network’s Brian Baldinger put out a tweet showing how Ridley didn’t get any help from Matt Shaub on a few passes. The worst part, Calvin Ridley retweeted it on twitter.
Now, I have zero insider information on if Ridley is unhappy with the team at all at this moment. But his response in that interview and his action on social media got me thinking about this whole thing.
One of the concerns when you have a losing team is losing young players who want to go elsewhere to win. Maybe not this year because of the trade deadline but what happens in 2020?
Now again, this could just be because the team is losing but also remember, Ridley’s stats are suffering. He’s not getting the football. This is a guy who had 92 targets last season and 10 touchdowns. Halfway through this season, 33 targets and 4 touchdowns.
Ridley has only 2 had games with over 70 yards receiving so far this year.
I’m worried that Calvin Ridley or any other young player on this team could start looking at this organization right now and asking “How am I going to get paid here when we keep losing?”
Think about it. Ridley could be looking at the Falcons and seeing a team that won’t be good for years, a team that doesn’t have any money and a team that has a WR they all love more than him.
Ridley is two-ish years away from his first big contract extension.
Now I know, there’s no source to this, I’m just going off of an answer he had in practice and a tweet he retweeted on Twitter. If you asked Ridley about his current faith in the organization right now he’d give a great politically correct response about being committed and wanting to win.
BUT, the prospect of good young talent (which the Falcons have very little of) getting upset and eventually leaving happens all the time with struggling teams and franchises.
The Falcons not only have their hands full with the remainder of this year but also going forward into next year. The Falcons need to be careful to keep faith in the organization and moral up despite losing or they could be staring down the path of losing what little talent they have in the future.