During training camp with the Atlanta Falcons last year, safety DeMarcco Hellams had to earn his place on the NFL team’s regular-season roster as a rookie. When the former Alabama defensive back reports for his second training camp on July 24, Hellams will be seeking a spot in the Falcons’ starting lineup.
“Last year, I’m just seeing what the league’s about, getting my feet wet as far as it was on special teams, a little bit on defense toward the end of the year,” Hellams told Sports Illustrated’s “Falcon Report.” “I just feel like coming into this year, all the learning curves, I feel like I got those out the way Year 1, so going into this year, I feel like I’m just coming in as a bigger, stronger and faster player.”
Hellams led Alabama in tackles in the 2022 season, but he didn’t get picked in the 2023 NFL Draft until the 224th selection.
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Hellams made the team as a seventh-round choice, and in Atlanta’s first 10 games, he got on the field for 64 defensive snaps and 144 special-teams plays. But after the Falcons’ Week 11 bye, Hellams played 305 defensive snaps and started four times at safety in Atlanta’s next six games. He missed the final contest of a season with a concussion.
Hellams’ increase in playing time meant less playing time for Richie Grant, a 2021 second-round pick who started every game in 2022 and 15 in 2023. Both players return this year to compete to start with Jessie Bates III at the back of the Falcons’ defense.
“Marcco has done a really good job,” Bates said during Atlanta’s offseason program. “I’ve always told Marcco he has no problems playing football -- seeing it and feeling it. But the biggest thing I’ve seen is him understanding the playbook and just being able to go, ‘Oh, this is the same thing as what we ran last year,’ or being able to just process routes and stuff like that.
“I think Marcco wants to hit people right now, but he can’t do that. But I can see the improvement and growth he’s making as a player and as a person, so it’s really cool to see.”
While Hellams finished 14th in defensive snaps for Atlanta last season, his 25 solo tackles tied for eighth on the team, and he had 40 total stops.
“Going off the film from last year, you saw a physical player,” new Falcons defensive coordinator Jimmy Lake said. “A guy that enjoys tackling, and really is one of the pillars of how we want to play. We want to play fast, we want to play free, we want to play physical, and he plays physical. He fills that, for sure.”
Atlanta didn’t use any of its eight draft picks on defensive backs in April. The Falcons gave up the eighth-fewest passing yards in the NFL in the 2023 season, although the Atlanta defense’s touchdown pass-to-interception ratio of 24-to-8 was tied for the fourth-worst in the league.
After going 7-10 and missing the playoffs for the sixth straight season in 2023, the Falcons hired Raheem Morris as their head coach in January. Atlanta’s defensive-backs coach in 2015 and defensive coordinator and interim head coach in 2020 during his six seasons on the Falcons’ staff, Morris had worked the previous three seasons as the Los Angeles Rams’ defensive coordinator.
“Us not bringing in any secondary guys, not drafting any secondary guys,” Hellams said, “it definitely was something that I looked at, the guys looked at as far as: OK, if his is what (Morris) and this is what Lake – and (general manager) Terry (Fontenot) also – did, then obviously that says how they feel about us. They feel like the guys in this room can get it done, and every guy in that room feels the same way, so it wasn’t a surprise when no one was drafted in the DB room. It was just another look at each other like: OK, so we know what we said before as in we all we have, we all we need.”
After starting training camp in Flowery Branch, Georgia, later this month, the Falcons kick off their three-game preseason schedule against the Miami Dolphins on Aug. 9 and begin their regular-season slate against the Pittsburgh Steelers on Sept. 8.
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Mark Inabinett is a sports reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter at@AMarkG1.