The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Facilities to stay closed till March 27
Move comes as team preps for NFL draft set for April 23-25.
After deep cleaning the Falcons’ facilities in Flowery Branch, the Atlanta United facilities in Marietta and the Arthur Blank Family Foundation offices in Buckhead, they all will remain closed to nonessential employees until March 27, President Rich McKay told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Friday.
“The thought was, we’d do that and shut (down) for the weekend and open on Monday,” McKay said. “We met over and over again, and the information is changing so rapidly that we made a decision this morning that we are going to keep all of those facilities shut for nonessential people all the way through March 27.”
With the start of the new league year set for Wednesday and the NFL draft coming up April 23-25, Falcons general manager Thomas Dimitroff and coach Dan Quinn had been advised two weeks ago to be ready to work remotely.
“We feel that we are prepared to (work remotely), and then we felt like today we just needed to take the step making sure with the school closures, being empathic to what’s going on here and the information we had, that it was best for us to stay shut through the 27th.”
The Falcons are preparing for the start of the league’s new business year.
“We are going to prepare as if the league year is going to open on Wednesday,” McKay said. “We don’t know the status of the (collective bargaining agreement) vote. We will know that status on Sunday. But we are prepared in both instances on the CBA front and the league new year.”
Also, NFL teams received a memo from the league office Friday banning the 30 official pre-draft visits from draft prospects. Teams can no longer attend pro days.
The Falcons are confident they can be ready for the draft without those visits.
“Ninety-five percent of our work is complete,” McKay said. “In the draft process, we’re down to the last 5%. We’ve been scouting these players for two years on tape. We’ve been going to their schools. Many of these players were at the combine.
“We’ve got physicals on these players. We’ve done a lot of work. This last 5% usually involves a crosscheck by a scout, but usually by a coach.”
The new guidelines allow for teams to meet with players via video, and those reports must be documented.
“Is it perfect and ideal (compared to) the way we’ve done it in the past?” McKay said. “No, it’s not. But we’ll be able to adjust. We’ll be able to be ready for the draft.”
Also, between the new year and the draft, the Falcons are scheduled to start the first phase of their offseason training program April 19.
“None of those dates have changed as of now,” McKay said. “(We all) saw what happened this week with the rapidly changing information. You never know, but we have to prepare like those are happening in the same order.”
On Thursday, the Falcons announced they were pulling all of their coaches and the scouts off the road. McKay, who’s been a fixture in the NFL for more than 30 years, is ready for additional changes if necessary.
“All of us, not just people in the football business, everybody, we are in the uncharted territory,” McKay said. “We just have to be emphatic toward each other and realize that things are going to change; when they change, we have to deal with them.”