The Atlanta Falcons held a closed practice today at the team’s facility in Flowery Branch, GA. First-round pick Jalon Walker was back on the field and working with the defense after dealing with a hamstring issue.
The former Georgia Bulldog should be a big part of the solution to the Falcons’ annual pass-rush woes and he just says he’s glad to be back out there with his teammates.
“I feel good,” Walker said. “I’m feeling so happy to be back out here. Happy for the week. It’s a big week of this first preseason game and excited to get things going.”
The Falcons are hoping to have Walker back to get some reps in the team’s first preseason game Friday night against the Detroit Lions.
Jalon Walker has been out for most of last week
Maria Martin of 11Alive got inside the Falcons’ practice today (most likely with a press pass, not a lockpick or anything like that) and said it was good to see him out on the field for the first time in a while.
“It’s a welcome sight for Falcons fans, who are perhaps as excited for the UGA product as any rookie in the last several years,” Martin reported. “He’d been quietly absent from practices for a lot of last week, before coach Raheem Morris acknowledged he had a “small hamstring issue.”
Martin posted a video of practice during her report that you can check out on her X account. For what it’s worth, Walker looks like a violent animal in that video and Falcons fans have to be thrilled about that. Maybe the Falcons should task someone with thoroughly angering him before every game.
Head coach Raheem Morris says that Walker is getting up to speed “pretty quickly, you know, as soon as he gets more comfortable out there moving around.”
“Already starting to pick some of those things up, cross training on some of those things already,” Morris continued. “He’s very smart, very sharp, very detailed guy. So nothing you worry about from that standpoint. But I just want to give him a chance to be comfortable doing something first, see that happen, come to life.”
Bijan Robinson says the defense already looks different
For what it’s worth, perhaps the arrival of Walker and fellow first-round pick James Pearce, Jr. has had an impact on the defense overall. Running back Bijan Robinson sure thinks things are different from last season.
“The defense has changed, man,” Robinson said. “They’re super athletic, which is great, but the mentality’s changed, they’re more aggressive, they’re playing for each other, everything that ‘Brick’ (defensive coordinator Jeff Ulbrich) says to them, like they listen and they do it. And it makes us happy obviously (but) some practices I be getting pissed off. Like, bruh, we’re trying to break everything all the time as an offense, and were trying to create these explosives in the run game and the pass game, which we’ll do, but like they’re so energetic and if they make a big play they’re gonna make it known. They’re gonna come to your face like, ‘We here.'”
It would be a good thing if the Falcons’ defense could annoy someone – anyone – in 2025, because they’ve been awfully cordial the last few years. It sounds like Walker could be quite an annoyance if he stays on the field.
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