FLOWERY BRANCH, Ga. — The Atlanta Falcons' board for the 2025 NFL Draft is set. It has been for a week.
However, that doesn't mean it can't change in the next 24 hours or so. Nothing is ever in stone until the actual pick is made. And right now, the Falcons are slated to make their first selection at No. 15 overall when Round 1 begins Thursday at 8 p.m. ET.
"We feel good about all the work that's gone into it," Falcons general manager Terry Fontenot said Wednesday in his annual pre-draft press conference. "But you always want to watch another game. You always want to make one more phone call. You always want to dig a little bit deeper into things. I think, when you have that kind of mindset, you just want to keep doing more, more and more."
The Falcons want to ensure they've done their due diligence, basically.
The draft is a year-round effort by Atlanta's coaching staff and scouting department that boils down to three days and the undrafted free agency wave that'll come in aftermath. Fontenot may be the one who makes the call, both literally and figuratively. But everyone involved helps make the decision and aims to feel confident doing so.
"It starts with the college scouts," Fontenot said. "They're the first boots on the ground. They gather a lot of intel and a lot of information from a lot of sources, and they go through that. I'm not going to get into all the specifics of how we go about gathering information, but then you have background checks. There's a lot of layers to that."
Just like there is for physical evaluations. Doctors – plural – get involved. Again, specifics weren't provided.
All of this more personal info is then evaluated on top of a prospect's football body of work – proven production from college and potential production for professional.
Every year, though, there are players who are deemed unfit to draft regardless of their on-field promise due to off-field concerns, whether that be medical or character. Fontenot called it the norm, something every team experiences.
"It's sad when you go through it, that hey, this player," Fontenot said. "When you get that list sometime after the combine, you have that medical meeting and you see some players that you actually can't draft because of the medical. It's the same process with the character. You go through it, there's character flags that we discuss, and there's players that we wouldn't bring in the building because of those things. But it's a very detailed thorough process. We take it seriously."
Because it's a possible four- or five-year commitment. The draft is teams' way of adding young talent in hopes of rookies becoming veterans. The tentpole event exists for the future of the sport.
So, no matter who experts have repeatedly predicted the Falcons will bring to Atlanta this weekend regardless of medical or character history, only those in-house have the true list that meets internal priorities.
"You have the board set," Fontenot said. "But the hay is never in the barn."
