Finding Falcons is a series that ventures beyond Atlanta's decision to draft a specific player and reveals the why behind doing so. Exclusive interviews with Falcons position coaches, area scouts and the decision-makers at the top detail the moments that solidified the decision to draft each of the men who make up their 2025 draft class. For five consecutive weeks, we'll tell those stories.
Previous installments: Jalon Walker | James Pearce Jr.
Stories by Tori McElhaney
FLOWERY BRANCH, Ga. — There are endearing turns of phrase people could use to describe Xavier Watts' newness to the safety position.
He's only been a safety for two years, so one could say he's wet behind the ears, or still learning the ropes or even (if you're from the deep South) he's just fallen off the turnip truck or doesn't have the sense yet that God gave a goose. All of these idioms and sayings describe someone relatively inexperienced, or with a lack of knowledge, or someone with an overall greenness that only goes away with time.
None of these sayings, however, accurately describe the player Watts is just two years into his safety-playing days.
Despite only moving to the position prior to his senior season at Notre Dame, Watts is anything but green. He doesn't play that way.
"X is one of the smartest players I have ever watched at safety," Falcons area scout Ryan Doyal said after the Falcons drafted Watts in the third round of the 2025 NFL Draft.
Doyal would be lying if he said Watts has been on his radar for a multitude of years. He wasn't because there really wasn't much foundation for Doyal to evaluate. Watts was recruited to Notre Dame as a receiver. There he started his journey, then he was moved to defensive back, then to a hybrid linebacker role, then back to receiver, before finally, after years of movement, settled into the safety position for the Irish.
What surprised Doyal about Watts when he finally did find his way on Doyal's radar in the midst of his senior season? That Watts was still with Notre Dame at all despite the many inconsistencies of his positional journey.
"This is the type of kid he is: He didn't transfer. He didn't run from it," Doyal said. "He stayed, and he did all the right things."
And what he turned into was a consensus First-Team All-American two years in a row. Finishing his lone two years as a safety with 13 career interceptions, the most by any Notre Dame player since 1996.
His instincts and feel for the game are what separated Watts from the pack. That, and according to Doyal, his decision to return to Notre Dame for one more season as a starter and continue his game-impacting ways solidified that Watts wasn't just a one-hit wonder.
"It's like, 'Man, he's in the right place at the right time.' But then he just keeps doing it. And then he comes back for another year and he does the exact same thing again," Doyal said. "So, the instincts truly stand out."
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.
