FLOWERY BRANCH, Ga. — Thomas Dimitroff Jr. stands on the sidelines of a football practice in suburban Atlanta, crouching to study the nuances of each snap, processing exactly how the play develops and how it ends.
It's a hot, humid day under the Georgia sun and Dimitroff, 42, is midway through his first training camp as the general manager of the NFL's Atlanta Falcons. But, the setting aside, it could be 25 years earlier when, as a teenager, he would do the same thing during practices run by his father, Tom Sr., at the University of Guelph.
A lot of kids grow up loving football, but Dimitroff seemed born with the same instincts for thinking the game that had defined his father, a former CFL and NFL quarterback who coached in both Ottawa and Hamilton in the professional ranks and then at Guelph before moving to the NFL as a scout.
One can debate nature against nurture when it comes to how kids come of age and what they chose to do with their lives. But for Dimitroff, it always seemed like a combination of both.
In this January file photo, a newly hired Thomas Dimitroff Jr. speaks during a news conference at the Arthur Blank Family Foundation headquarters in Atlanta. Dimitroff left his job as director of scouting for the New England Patriots to become the Atlanta Falcons general manager. (John Bazemore/AP)
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- Atlanta Falcons
- Jacksonville Jaguars
- New England Patriots
- New York Giants
- Saskatchewan Roughriders
- Toronto Argonauts
- Sam Baker
- Matt Ryan
- Mike Smith
- LaDainian Tomlinson
- Michael Turner
- Michael Vick
"My dad was a big influence me," Dimitroff said of his father, who died in 1996. "I mean, from the day I was born, I've been around the game of football. I remember the days at Lansdowne Park in Ottawa. I just got a chance to be at practices, hanging around as a young kid, running around throwing balls with Tom Clements and Conredge Holloway. And sitting in the film room with my dad talking football as a youngster. It was one of those groundbreaking things for me as child to sit in there and watch my dad coach and talk scheme."
All these years later, that ability to communicate the game of football was just what the Falcons were looking for when, at the end of last season, they began to pick up the pieces of one of the most disastrous campaigns in memory.
A 4-12 record was the least of problems for a team that saw its franchise quarterback, Michael Vick, haled off to jail, and its head coach, Bobby Patrino, quit with three games remaining in the first year of a five-year contract.
Falcons owner Arthur Blank, the billionaire founder of Home Depot, hired former New York Giants general manager Ernie Accorsi to help him find a general manager who could chart a new course for the beleaguered franchise.
"He wanted a young, bright, people-oriented executive with a winning background," Accorsi said. "I gave them a list of five names and I had [Dimitroff] rated No.ƒ|1."
When the Falcons hired Dimitroff last January, fresh off a five-year stint as the director of college scouting for the New England Patriots, few football fans or news media people in the United States knew much about his climb from being an Ontario university all-star defensive back in the late 1980s all the way to the NFL executive ranks.
Dimitroff's association with the Pats was undoubtedly what attracted the Falcons. But those who've known him for a long time insist he was destined to wind up where he is today.
"It was just a matter of time until water flowed downhill," recalled former CFL fullback Jed Tommy, who played at Guelph for Dimitroff Sr. while Dimitroff Jr. was in high school. "He would stand-in in drills and he would sit there and watch film with us. He was in the huddle, unless it was inappropriate, and then he would stand behind so he could watch the development of plays. That intuitiveness was born from his time around the game and the time spent with his father."
Dimitroff has aggressively overhauled the Falcons in every way. After hiring Jacksonville Jaguars defensive co-ordinator Mike Smith as the head coach, he made a splash in free agency by signing Michael Turner, a highly prized running back who'd been stuck behind LaDainian Tomlinson in San Diego.
