Head Coach Mike Smith
Opening Statement
“We have two guys who weren’t here. Glenn Sharp was excused from practice because he had a personal matter. We anticipate he will be here tomorrow and Roddy White’s not here. I thought the guys came out with a lot of energy at practice today and worked extremely hard. It was a good start. I also want to say it’s nice to have all eight of our draft picks out here from the very beginning. Thomas (Dimitroff) and his staff did a great job with the negotiations to get these guys here. Kudos to them.”
Q: Is the Roddy White issue a distraction for the team?
A: “No it’s not a distraction and I want to state that I’m not angry. How can you be angry when it’s the first day of training camp and the first day of the 2009 season? This is my favorite day of the year. So, I’m not angry at all and I don’t believe it will be a distraction. You can’t concern yourself with guys that aren’t here. All we can do is coach the guys that are here. Our job as a coaching staff is to prepare our team for 2009.”
Q: At what point will you become angry?
A: “Like I said, there’s a mechanism in place with a collective bargaining agreement in terms of how these things get handled and I’m not going to get angry about it. There’s no reason to get angry. Again, I can only coach the guys that are here along with our coaching staff. That’s how we’re going to approach the situation.”
Q: What is your overall impression of the team so far?
A: “Well it’s nice to see the guys coming back and there are different levels of excitement when you go through a season. With OTAs, we’re working hard, but it’s not quite how we’re working right now. It’s going to be even a little bit more exciting when we put the pads on and go out in shells tomorrow afternoon. Monday morning will be the real test to see how our team is going to go. “
Q: Will you do anything different this year than you did from last year and what did you learn?
A: “No we’re not going to do a whole lot different. We’ve evaluated everything that we’ve done as a coaching staff, and we’ve made some subtle changes in how we present things, but as far as the sequence in a practice, our main goal is to get to the opener as healthy as possible. When you go through a training camp, sometimes that’s hard to do. We’re going to work hard and work smart. You’ll see that some of our older players will have some days off, some guys will get some one-a-days, and that’s all by design. So, when you see some guys that aren’t out there it may not be because they’re injured, it’s because we’re going to give them some time off.”
Q: Did you notice the excitement of the rookies being here in the secondary today?
A: "Yeah I did, I thought that our young secondary guys went out there and competed this morning. Chris Owens made a couple of plays. William Moore and William Middleton have a lot of energy there. That’s an area that we’re having a whole bunch of competition in. That’s what training camp is all about. It’s about competing and we’re going to have a bunch of guys competing to earn a spot on the 53-man roster.”
Q: What are you most anxious to see going in to camp?
A: “How our guys are going to come out and start this camp. Are they enthusiastic? Are they reinvigorated? Are they energized? I think I saw that today in the first practice. We’ll get another evaluation this afternoon and the next time is about day three and four. I want to see how the guys are handling the two-a-days for three or four days. “
Q: Tell us about the addition of Mike Peterson and bringing intensity to the defense.
A:” Well Mike is going to be a mentor for our young guys. Mike loves to play the game and he’s been doing it for a long time. He’s got 10 years in the League and he’s a guy that enjoys playing the game of football. I think he’ll mentor a lot of our guys about having a passion and love for the game. Mike certainly does."
Q: Is it safe to say that Roddy White made the team better?
A: “Oh there’s no doubt about that. Roddy White is a Pro Bowl player. Again, we’ve got people in place. Thomas (Dimitroff) and his staff are working on this. Really, there’s nothing more I can say about it. Again I want to say that the guys that are here are the guys that we are going to coach.”
Q: This being the second year for you and Matt Ryan, do you have any plans to expand the playbook?
A: “Yes. We’ve expanded in all areas, not just on the offensive side of the ball. We’ve got some guys that understand our verbiage and understand how we do things in all three areas. So we have evaluated everything we’ve done and you’re going to see differences in what we did in 2008. It’s a different football team.”
Q: Do you feel the need to change things up from last year?
A: “When you do things well, you want to continue to do them. You don’t want to change them just to change them. We did not put our entire playbook in last year."
Day One -- Saturday, Aug. 1, 2009
8:30 a.m./3:45 p.m. Practice
@FalconsJMoore "Words of the Day"
- TRANSCRIPT: Head Coach Mike Smith talks about the first day at camp
- FEATURE: Fans flock to Flowery Branch for first day of camp
- RELEASE: Birds sign linebacker Jamie Winborn
- VIDEO: Head Coach Mike Smith | Ryan | Abraham | Gonzalez | Jerry | Moore
- BLOGS: J. Michael Moore's blog posts from Aug. 1, 2009
- PHOTOS: Images from the team's first day at camp (Flickr)
