For Mike Rutenberg, the Falcons’ newest defensive pass game coordinator, he was scouring the tape looking for someone who stood out.
Every offseason for coaches starts the same. After they watch tape on their own returning players, they’re given a lengthy list of college prospects by the scouting department. Those names and the subsequent hours of film they watch on said names, are put in alphabetical order. Any kindergartener will tell you, you have to get through a lot of names before someone with a last name that starts with a “W” pops up. That’s how it felt for Rutenburg.
It’s not that his eyes were glazing over, per se. He loves the game too much for that to happen. But he was waiting for a spark. Something — someone — who made him sit up with excitement. When he got to the name Watts, he did exactly that.
“You don’t get to ‘W’ for a while, but when you do, you turn on the tape and you’re like, ‘Woah. Xavier. This is the real deal right here,'” Ruternberg said.
“You always read up on these guys, of course. … But the tape tells the story, and Xavier’s tape told the story from the jump. You see the speed. You see the movement. You see the size. You combine all of that with his ball production and then finding out more about him as a person, what else do you want?”
For assistant general manager Kyle Smith, the tape told the story for him, too. After Watts was drafted, Smith said it was Watts who’s evaluation was one of the easiest and cleanest the Falcons had throughout this draft cycle. Why is that you may ask? Well, because, according to Smith, “you’re seeing him do exactly what you envision him doing for us.”
“He can play man, can play zone, can blitz, is really good in the run game, on top of the fact — and I am going to constantly come back to it with Xavier — he’s a heart, mind, fist type of guy,” Rutenberg said of defensive coordinator Jeff Ulbrich’s go-to mantra. “That’s what we are looking for, and he is going to fit in with our style and culture.”
In this culture, Rutenburg said, the ball — and getting to it — is the life blood of this unit.
“We have a saying on defense that the ball is oxygen,” Rutenberg said. “You die without it. You got to live with it.”
There’s a certain “X factor” that comes with those who find a way to get their hands on the ball time and time again, Rutenburg explained. Watts — by all accounts — has that… no pun intended.
“You want to talk about making an impact? Turnovers make an impact,” Doyal concluded. “… If you look at the statistics, you’re winning games because of these turnovers. So, is (Watts) impactful? Yeah. Absolutely. Every day of the week.”
It’s this X factor that brought Xavier Watts to Atlanta. And that’s a saying worth more than all the rest.