This is the athletic football show.

Welcome to the athletic football show.

I'm Robert Mays.

Very excited about today's show. This is the last entry, the eighth one, in our offseason interview series that we've done. I've had a fantastic time doing these. We have four NFL GMs, couple head coaches. I hope you guys have gotten something out of them. I've sure gleaned a lot. And the last one is one I definitely wanted to set up when we were getting this all together.

I am thrilled to welcome Falcons General Manager Terry Fondon. Terry, how are you doing today? Man, I'm pumped to be here. Did you say it's your eighth? This is the eighth show of the series? Eighth show of the series, eighth and final. So we finally made it happen. But yeah, it's one of those things. You sit there in the offseason. It's like, what do I want to do?

And this was the idea that I had.

I was like, I want to do?

And this was the idea that I had.

It was like I want to see how many coaches, GMs we can get on. And the fact that we got eight of them, I feel pretty good about it. I feel like we definitely got something out of this. That's really cool. So that's my number. I was number eight.

Growing up, I was eight in high school.

I switched to number 18 in college, but eight is my number. I was number eight. Growing up, I was eight in high school. I switched to number 18 in college, but eight, it's my number, man. So it's going to be a good show. I feel very good about this. So the first thing I wanted to ask you, I'm always so interested in the places that general managers come from, right? Because with head coaches, for the most part, you're coordinators. You're an offensive or defensive coordinator. You come from a similar world, even if it's a different side of the ball. With GMs, you have people coming from so many different places. Some people come from the salary cap side. Some people come from the college scouting side. You came from the pro personnel side in New Orleans. And I'm curious, as you were, as you've gotten to be on the job and as you started

building your... side. You came from the pro personnel side in New Orleans. And I'm curious, as you were, as you've

gotten to be on the job, and as you started building your staff, where do you think your blind

spots were based on your own history as the scope of the job changes? Where did you have to kind

of supplement your knowledge as you started to build up the staff that you guys have in Atlanta.

Yeah, yeah, that's a good question. And really, like you said, I grew up on the on the pro

scouting side of things. And I remember back when I was a scouting assistant and an intern in the

scouting department in New Orleans, this is probably 2003, 2004, and there were openings

and for entering jobs on both sides. So I could have went in as a pro scouting assistant,

or I could have taken the job as a National Combine Scout. And it was a, these jobs are hard to come by, but at the time it happened, I was lucky

enough to be able to make a choice in which route I wanted to go.

So I sat down with Mickey Loomis and, and we talked about it.

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