Now that we are a few years removed from the situation, I can look back and laugh at the entire Vic Beasley Jr. saga, primarily because of how incompetent the Falcons were in all of it.
Every season, guys come into the draft, and their motives are questioned. It’s the worst type of red flag a player can receive, because no matter how talented, it’s nearly impossible for someone to succeed at the NFL level for a long time without really loving the game of football.
That’s exactly what happened to Vic Beasley Jr. coming out of college. He was a genetic freak that tested out of his mind leading up to the draft and was a lock to go in the first round. However, there were questions surrounding his love for the game, and to make matters worse, Thomas Dimitroff has since revealed that the Falcons were aware of those concerns yet thought they could fix him and ended up selecting him 8th overall.
Now, Beasley didn’t turn out to be the biggest bust of that entire draft. He even had an All-Pro campaign from out of nowhere, but there were far too many inconsistent stretches, causing more people from outside the building to question if he really cared about the results.
Of course, if people from the outside could tell something was off, you can bet your bottom dollar that management and the coaching staff were aware as well. Yet, somehow the Falcons still decided to pick up Beasley’s fifth year option.
I’m not sure what’s more egregious: drafting Beasley in the top 10 while knowing his heart isn’t really committed to the game, or picking up his fifth-year option after being around him for four years and realizing he’s not 100% committed to football.
It’s downright comical, and these most recent stories surfaced via Taylor Lewan and Will Compton on the Bussin’ With The Boys podcast paint an even more hilarious picture of a player who simply did not give one iota about the game or his team.
Taylor Lewan started out the conversation by saying, “Vic’s rookie year, we played the Falcons, and that man broke in three quarters.”
But that was only the beginning.
Will Compton then followed it up by telling a story of how Beasley attempted to convince the team to boycott the entire 2020 season before even playing a single game with the organization. To which Lewan added even more fuel to the fire, talking about how Beasley once got stuck on an elevator before a game and was pissed that it got fixed because he was trying to “chill and collect.”
Lewan and Compton spent a grand total of a few months around Vic Beasley. Both of them knew within weeks that this man was not serious about the game and couldn’t care less about the team. On the flip side, the Falcons ignored all of the red flags on several occasions. They spent four years around him and still decided to hand him a fifth year option.
That’s nothing more than gross negligence, which is exactly why the old regime was eventually fired into the sun. It’s almost even more of a testament to Matt Ryan‘s career that the Falcons had as much success as they did with Thomas Dimitroff and company running the show.
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Photo: Todd Kirkland/Icon Sportswire
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