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"&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Leaving the team cafeteria and walking past the Falcons practice fields after a nutritious and conspicuously meatless lunch last month, Atlanta general manager Thomas Dimitroff fielded a suggestion from a visitor.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u201CYou should cut a mountain bike trail into that hill over there,\u201D offered George Hincapie, the former Lance Armstrong teammate who that morning had accompanied Dimitroff on a rolling, 55-mile ride on the back roads near the team headquarters, with this sportswriter pedaling along for the ride.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u201CI &lt;em&gt;did&lt;/em&gt;,\"&amp;nbsp;Dimitroff was gratified to reply. \u201CI\u2019d go back there with work gloves,\u201D and pick, and shovel, \u201Cand that would be my workout.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Dimitroff, an ex-mountain bike racer, rock-climber, snowboarder and seriously strong road cyclist\u2014he\u2019s almost certainly the only NFL GM with shaved legs\u2014met Hincapie during an offseason cycling retreat at The Hotel Domestique. That\u2019s the name of Hincapie\u2019s European-inspired lodgings in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, north of Greenville, S.C. Dimitroff, a longtime cycling aficionado whose job it is to put teams together, had a deep appreciation for Hincapie\u2019s selfless role on the 17 Tour de France teams. They got a few rides in, and bonded. While the GM surely disapproved of Hincapie\u2019s admitted use of performance-enhancing drugs during his riding career, he didn\u2019t let it foreclose the possibility of friendship. Last July, Dimitroff took that open-minded attitude to Aspen, Col., where, having been introduced by Hincapie, he spent three days mountain biking with Armstrong.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u200BDimitroff isn\u2019t the only NFL executive who balances the intense pressure and brutal hours of his profession with an equally robust quest for fitness and adrenaline. But he\u2019s probably the most overt, the least apologetic, about it. His friend and fellow GM Trent Baalke of the 49ers has been described as \u201Cborderline OCD about working out.\u201D A recent attempt to draw Baalke out on his exercise regimen\u2014I tried to strike up conversation with him while waiting for an elevator at Levi\u2019s Stadium\u2014elicited bupkes. The typical MO for NFL executives who do work out is to keep that penchant for exercise under wraps, lest the word circulate that an executive isn\u2019t devoting &lt;em&gt;every waking minute&lt;/em&gt; to the club.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Dimitroff, a 48-year-old ex-vegan who is now merely a vegetarian, isn\u2019t playing that game. \u201CI call bulls--- on that thought process,\u201D he said with a smile during that morning\u2019s ride. Earlier in his career, he was \u201Cpigeonholed,\u201D he recalls. Some of the more conventional thinkers in his line of work looked askance at his passion for fitness and adventure (to say nothing of his long hair and unorthodox diet). If he cared so much about those things, how much ardor remained \u2026 for football?\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u201CI\u2019m wildly passionate about it,\u201D says Dimitroff, whose late father, Tom Sr., was a longtime coach and scout, in Canada and the U.S. \u201CI was born and raised on this sport\u2014it was how we ate.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Tom Dimitroff played quarterback for Ara Parseghian at Miami of Ohio, the so-called Cradle of Coaches, a fountainhead of cautious, conservative gridiron doctrine\u2014Paul Brown, Woody Hayes, Bo Schembechler and Lou Holtz had all passed through\u2014that rubbed off on Tom Dimitroff, but not on his son, Thomas. After returning to his alma mater as an assistant in the late 1960s, the elder Dimitroff uprooted his family to Ottawa in \u201974, for what became a 12-year coaching and scouting odyssey in the Great White North. It was during this happy exile that Thomas spent four years playing defensive back at the University of Guelph, where his Dad had been head coach from 1979 to \u201983. His journey had just begun: After college he scouted for the Saskatchewan Rough Riders, worked briefly in Dallas for the doomed WLAF, then coached a corporate team in Japan before finally getting his foot in the NFL door.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Even then, it was a muddy, grass-stained foot. By \u201987, Tom Sr. was back in Ohio, as a scout for the Browns. There he was able to get Thomas Jr. a position with the team \u2026 as a groundskeeper.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Another up-and-comer in Cleveland in those days was Scott Pioli, now an assistant GM to Dimitroff in Atlanta. While his was a lowly place in the Browns\u2019 front office\u2014Pioli would go on to become Bill Belichick\u2019s top lieutenant in New England, then the GM of the Chiefs\u2014at least he worked &lt;em&gt;indoors&lt;/em&gt;. He befriended the younger Dimitroff, who, after painting lines on football fields would take refuge in his office.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;When he wasn\u2019t painting, mowing or re-sodding Cleveland\u2019s turf, Dimitroff was a part-time scout for the Chiefs. In 1994, the Lions brought him on full-time as an \u201Carea scout.\u201D&amp;nbsp; Based in Boulder, Col., he worked hard and played hard, \u2019boarding, biking, rock-climbing. Those passions, along with his longish hair and veganism, earned him more than a few sidelong glances from his NFL peers.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;As Dimitroff proved when he bet the farm on Julio Jones in 2011\u2014the Falcons traded five draft picks to move up and grab the gifted wideout with the sixth overall pick\u2014he doesn\u2019t care what outsiders think, if he\u2019s done his homework. He\u2019s always been outside the mainstream of the scouting tribe. To the discerning minds who took a chance on him\u2014Pioli and Bill Belichick lured him to the Patriots in \u201902\u2014his willingness to go against the grain was a plus, not a minus.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;His resolve to be true to himself was fortified in 1996, during a deathbed conversation with his father. Tom Dimitroff was an old school football mind; his son did his best work out of the mainstream. But his best work was very, very good. At the end of his life, his body ravaged with cancer, father urged son never to change, \u201Cto live my life the way I wanted to live my life,\u201D as Thomas shared two years ago with the Atlanta-based SaportaReport, \u201Cto live with passion and shoot for the stars.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;He\u2019s done that with his draft day derring-do: for the seventh straight year, Dimitroff traded up in the draft (although his 2014 maneuver, a Day 3 swap of late-round picks, was less dramatic than usual).\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Atlanta\u2019s emphasis, coming off its disastrous\u2014and, the Falcons hope, anomalous\u2014season which garnered merely four wins: Get tougher, as anyone knows who witnessed the profusion of training camp fisticuffs and shoving matches on &lt;em&gt;Hard Knocks&lt;/em&gt;. \u201CWe set out to bigger, more physical, &lt;em&gt;grittier&lt;/em&gt;,\u201D Dimitroff elaborates. \u201CI don\u2019t want to be a thug team, but you can\u2019t get pushed around.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The GM knows from toughness. On that brisk 55-miler, the group stopped twice to refill water bottles and take on some calories. Dimitroff stopped, as well\u2014not because he was tired, but because he\u2019s a good host. \u201CI\u2019m not a big \u2018stop-during-the-ride\u2019 guy,\u201D he explained. \u201CI\u2019ve become a diesel in my old age. When I get off the bike, then get back on, immediately I feel tightness.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;That\u2019s a good thing&lt;/em&gt;, thought this sportswriter who\u2019d been laboring to hold the pace, despite\u2014how cool was this?\u2014Hincapie\u2019s generous invitation to draft behind him. &lt;em&gt;If he cramps up, maybe he\u2019ll slow the f--- down&lt;/em&gt;.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;I\u2019d already attempted to slow Dimitroff down by posing open-ended questions.&amp;nbsp;&lt;em&gt;That\u2019s a sweet-looking ride\u2014where\u2019d you get it&lt;/em&gt;? He was gratified to fill me in: For a recent trip to France with his wife, Angeline, and their young son, Mason, he couldn\u2019t ship a bike across the pond, nor could he find a decent one to rent, so he picked up this gleaming carbon-fiber Look 695 at a shop in Dijon\u2014\u201Cthe model Cofidis rode in 2013!\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;It\u2019s easy to draw him out further on the bike\u2019s sublime design\u2014the stem and seat post are integrated into the frame, which I haven\u2019t seen before. Dimitroff is something of a velo-geek, happy to do a deep dive on components, wheel sets, even the wicking properties of the Hincapie kit in which he\u2019s riding. It\u2019s short jump from there\u2014and another open-ended question for him to chew on, while I suck wind\u2014to the cutting edge methods the Falcons have adopted, under Dimitroff, to train, and to measure athletic performance.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Last September, he traveled to Menlo Park, Cal., to meet with Phil Wagner, the founder of Sparta Performance Science. By recording the energy athletes apply as they jump from a piece of equipment called a force plate, Wagner has \u201Ccome across this new formula, or algorithm,\u201D that has allowed him, Dimitroff effused, \u201Cto basically create movement signatures\u201D for his subjects.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Another space-age tool used by the Falcons is Fusionetics, which uses \u201Cfunctional movement screens\u201D to break down players\u2019 biomechanics, and, ideally, says Dimitroff, \u201Cdetermine whether someone\u2019s going to be more susceptible to injury\u2014to pulling a hamstring, for instance.\u201D Armed with that knowledge, players can do preemptive drills and exercises to prevent those injuries.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;He is a kind of modern-day, spike-haired Arthur, questing for a general manager\u2019s holy grail: a way to prevent injuries before they happen. Alas, the quest continues. At one point during the ride I asked about left tackle Sam Baker. Noting that the Falcons had used their first-round pick to pluck sure-thing left tackle Jake Matthews, I wondered if that meant Sam should be looking over his shoulder.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Not at all, the GM replied. The idea was to break Matthews in at right tackle. \u201CSam\u2019s looking really good right now. He\u2019s 320, and playing well. Last year he played at 305, 303\u2014way too light.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;A few days later Baker blew out his right knee in an exhibition against the Texans, and was lost for the season. The Falcons had little choice but to toss Matthews into the deep end, plugging him in on Matt Ryan\u2019s blind side. The rookie held his own in the first half of Atlanta\u2019s season-opening win over the Saints \u2026 until he was forced from the game in the second quarter with an ankle injury. He hasn\u2019t played since.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The cold truth is, you can harness the magic of force plates and functional movement screens and be as progressive as you want. But you have to be lucky, too. The guy who won the &lt;em&gt;Sporting News&lt;/em&gt;\u2019 NFL Executive of the Year award in \u201908 and \u201910 didn\u2019t hemorrhage a bunch of IQ points last season. The team he\u2019d put together suffered an epidemic of injuries, and its fate was sealed.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Things could go either way for Atlanta this season. The birds looked terrific\u2014particularly on offense\u2014in that win over New Orleans, then fell to earth in last Sunday\u2019s loss in Cincinnati. If the Falcons can avoid another raft of injuries, they could win their division and get to the playoffs, as they did in 2010, \u201911 and \u201812. Even if Atlanta falls short, even if Dimitroff isn\u2019t dubbed by his peers the best GM in the NFL, he will still be the GM with the best legs.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\r\n&lt;/p&gt;"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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