Osi Umenyiora is a Falcon

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With the signing of Osi Umenyiora, the Falcons have begun to address a pressing need, finding a better pass rush from the defensive line. John Abraham was great for the Falcons for the last 7 years, but the fact remains his performance fell off in the second half and playoffs last season, and there was no guarantee that he would be able to produce for another season.

There have been some that have said that instead of Osi Umenyiora, the Falcons should have gone after one of the two bigger names on the DE market, Cliff Avril and Elvis Dumervil. I believe these both would have been bad moves for a couple of reasons. In Dumervil's case, the Falcons would have needed to put themselves in a less than desirable position cap wise in order to bring him in, seeing as he received a contract from the Ravens that will see his cap figure rise to 6.375 in 2015 and 2016 and 7.375 in 2017 when he is 33 years old.

As for Cliff Avril, his two year deal with the Seahawks will see him with a cap figure of 9.25 in 2014. In addition, I feel Avril's numbers are heavily swayed by the D-Line he played with in Detroit. In his first two seasons with the Lions, when Avril was not playing next to Ndamukong Suh, he averaged 22.5 tackles and 5.25 sacks. When Suh arrived in 2010, Avril's numbers jumped to 26.67 tackles and 9.67 sacks. As the Falcons saw with Ray Edwards, the players around someone can drastically change their production.

But what about Umenyiora? He played with a pretty good D-Line in New York, might he also be a product of his co-contributors? Umenyiora's best seasons with the Giants were 2005, 2007, 2010, and 2011. In those seasons, Umenyiora played in 57 games and tallied 137 tackles and 48 sacks, an average of 2.4 tackles and .84 sacks per game. This would total out to 13.47 sacks and 38.46 tackles in a 16 game season. However, how did Umenyiora's team perform those seasons. Here's a breakdown.

2005 - Giants - 28 sacks - Osi - 51.8%
2007 - Giants - 28 sacks - Osi - 46.4%
2010 - Giants - 16 sacks - Osi - 71.9%
2011 - Giants - 28 sacks - Osi - 32.1%

As you can see, Osi was the strongest link on the Giants line in these seasons, amassing 48% of the teams sacks in these 4 seasons. Umenyiora still believes he is a top notch pass rusher, and playing with a chip on his should might be enough to produce a season similar to these 4.

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