Four-year veteran center Drew Dalman signed a contract with the Chicago Bears. Dalman, a former fourth-round pick, spent the entirety of his career with the Atlanta Falcons.<\/p>\n
https:\/\/twitter.com\/rapsheet\/status\/1899132535197843733?s=46<\/p>\n
After establishing himself as one of the best centers in football, Drew Dalman proved he wasn’t a one-year fluke during the final year of his contract. While an ankle injury limited to nine games, he made his time on the field count by posting a 78.8 PFF grade, the fourth-best mark out of 40 eligible centers. The Falcons went 8-9 under first-year head coach Raheem Morris<\/a> and missed the playoffs.<\/p>\n Drew Dalman originally entered the league as a fourth-round pick in the 2021 NFL Draft<\/a>. Selected by the Atlanta Falcons, the Stanford product spent most of his rookie season on the bench. Appearing in 17 games without making a start, Dalman mostly watched on the sideline as the Falcons went 7-10 during the final season of the Matt Ryan Era<\/a>. He played well in limited action, however, finishing the season with a 78.3 PFF grade when on the field.<\/p>\n After spending his rookie season in a backup role, Dalman won the starting center job in 2022. Starting and appearing in all 17 games, the Stanford product had a promising season but didn’t set the world on fire. Finishing the season with a 65.9 PFF grade, Dalman was the 14th-best center out of 36 players. Despite his reliable play, the Falcons once again missed the playoffs as Marcus Mariota<\/a> could not adequately replace the departed Ryan.<\/p>\n Dalman built on his promising 2022 to establish himself as one of the game’s best centers in 2023. Starting and appearing in 14 games, the former fourth-round pick finished with an 82.3 PFF grade, the 3rd-best in the league.<\/p>\n Since signing his rookie contract, Drew Dalman has appeared in 57 games while making 40 starts.<\/p>\n Main Photo: Kirby Lee – USA Today Sports<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Veteran offensive lineman Drew Dalman has signed a new contract. The former fourth-round pick spent 2024 with the Atlanta Falcons<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2376,"featured_media":213156,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[36,27],"tags":[7727,8123,246],"class_list":["post-213143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nfl-news","category-falcons","tag-atlanta-falcons-news","tag-drew-dalman","tag-nfl-news"],"modified_by":"David Latham, Managing Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2376"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=213143"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213143\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":221728,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213143\/revisions\/221728"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/213156"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=213143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=213143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=213143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}