FLOWERY BRANCH, Ga. — There's something almost comforting about knowing a path is already well trodden. It means someone else has gone before you, perhaps taking the brunt of the overgrown trees and limbs, the tall grass and scurrying creatures. They're the ones who remove the biggest obstacles from your way, maybe even unknowingly.

In a simple sense, that's what Divine Deablo has been for Kendal Daniels just a couple of weeks into the latter's professional career.

Daniels is a very particular type of athlete: a college safety turned linebacker because his body grew and lengthened to the point that the move became necessary. He played versatile roles at both Oklahoma State and Oklahoma — not dissimilar to Deablo, in fact.

Deablo was a college safety, too, earning First-Team All-ACC honors at Virginia Tech. He was drafted by the Raiders in 2021 and quickly converted to linebacker because of his size and range. Those traits are what first put him on Jeff Ulbrich's radar.

Over the last decade in the NFL, Ulbrich has become something of a connoisseur of the evolving inside linebacker prototype. As offenses adapted to account for more mobile quarterbacks in the early 2000s, inside linebackers evolved, too. Nearly gone are the days of the late 1980s and 1990s, when thick-necked bruisers defined the position. Now, linebackers are expected to be sleeker. Faster.

Ulbrich's defensive philosophy mirrors that evolution. Back in 2015-16, he was instrumental in the Falcons drafting linebacker Deion Jones. Jones didn't come from a safety background, but he was a linebacker who shifted the mold. He was fast, running an official 4.40-second 40-yard dash. His sideline-to-sideline speed became his calling card, and the Falcons found success with Jones — along with De'Vondre Campbell and Vic Beasley — anchoring the defense.

A few years later, Ulbrich again pounded the table for a different type of linebacker. Foye Oluokun was a big-bodied safety from Yale who didn't receive an NFL Scouting Combine invite. Still, he had intriguing measurables: a thick build paired with impressive short-area quickness, as evidenced by his 4.12-second short shuttle time, which ranked second among linebackers in the 2018 draft class. He was originally slated as Jones' backup before becoming his linebacking partner in 2020.

In the years that followed, Oluokun experienced success similar to Jones before him. By 2021, Oluokun led the league in tackles, recording the seventh-highest single-season total in NFL history.

Ulbrich had a hand in acquiring and developing all of these players, leading up to Deablo in 2025, who helped anchor a record-breaking year for the unit.

That's why, when Falcons general manager Ian Cunningham spoke to the media after drafting Daniels in the fourth round of the 2026 NFL Draft, he called him a "Brich guy." Daniels fits the mold of the type of player Ulbrich has not only coveted but succeeded with since his days as the Falcons' inside linebackers coach during the Jones era.

"(Daniels) fits those measurables and what (Ulbrich) looks for and what we look for," Cunningham said. "Then, (with Daniels) going to Oklahoma and playing in the (Brent) Venables scheme, you see him play all over the field, stacked and the apex and sometimes even the line deep. He's a rare athlete. When you watch the tape, the movement, the length, the fluidity, he can do a lot of things for you on defense."

This prototype is now well established, and it has given Daniels a certain sense of confidence as he officially becomes a Falcon. He's seen players with this skill set succeed in Atlanta, and that matters to him.

"I have watched a lot of Divine's film," Daniels said at the Falcons rookie minicamp this past weekend. "Seeing how he transitioned and played in the defense has really helped me, because he came from the background with how he plays, how he moves around, you can just tell that he played safety."

Funny enough, there's an echo of that sentiment in what Falcons area scouts said about Daniels during the pre-draft process.

"He's 240 playing linebacker really with the same range, athleticism, skillset (he had at safety) — he kept all of that," Falcons area scout Dante Fangnoli said of Daniels. "He just put on the weight and his body grew into it."

Now, Daniels is playing for a coach who values this build and alongside a teammate who has already made this exact transition in the league, in this very scheme.

For Daniels, the path ahead is well trodden, and he's ready to follow it, too.

"Knowing that somebody who moved from safety to linebacker in this defense has helped me," Daniels concluded. "Watching (Deablo's) film and seeing how calm, cool and collected he is, that has helped me being able to watch his game and try to model my game a little bit."