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Home > Terence Moore > Archives > 2009 > January > 26
Monday, January 26, 2009
Falcons’ White paying attention during SB week
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Roddy White has spent most of his 27 years watching the Super Bowl. It’s just that when he does so Sunday from his Braselton home, he’ll leave that fan stuff behind.
He’ll study the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Arizona Cardinals with a physical or mental notepad in hand.
That’s splendid news for the Falcons, but only if White’s teammates do the same. You see, they blew it during the first round of the playoffs. So White will have a slew of objectives whenever he sits in front of his television screen this week, not only for Super Bowl Sunday from Tampa, but for Super Bowl Week in general.
“I’ll be learning how to win in big games and being in crucial situations and how to handle them,” said White, the Falcons’ rising wide receiver. “I’ll be learning how not to give up big plays and how to have big drives near the end of games. I’ll be looking at the attitude of the teams. That and their confidence. You can see those things in how hard they play, and that’s something our team can learn from those cats, because we have such a young team.”
They also have a frustrated team, or at least they should.
Every cleat step the Cardinals take toward an unlikely, but possible world championship, should cause those in Flowery Branch to cringe when they aren’t inclined to fume. With just a decent effort instead of a jittery one earlier this month at University of Phoenix Stadium, the Falcons of then could have become the Cardinals of now. They could have replaced Arizona as the NFL’s magic team. They could have been preparing for Tuesday’s Media Day at Raymond James Stadium.
It could have been this simple for the Falcons: They beat Arizona, and then they travel to Carolina, where they meet a Panthers bunch that the Falcons slammed during the second of two meetings this season between division rivals. The Falcons win again, and they face the Philadelphia Eagles in the NFC Championship Game at the Georgia Dome.
Remember, too, that the Falcons were within a controversial play of surging past the Eagles earlier in the season.
Hear that loud sound? It’s White joining others with the Falcons. They’re exchanging screams over the thought of those “could have been” situations.
“Yeah. You think about how we played those guys right down to the wire (in Arizona), and without a few mistakes and turnovers, it would be different,” said White, who also keeps imagining the missed opportunity of making a second Super Bowl trip for the franchise exactly a decade after the Dirty Birds. “I was really kicking myself after Philly beat the New York Giants in the playoffs, because we would have had that home game.”
Oh well. This gives White more time to learn from Larry Fitzgerald in particular. No athlete with a breath these days is hotter than Fitzgerald, and he plays the same position as White for the Cardinals. He just plays it at a significantly higher level than White or anybody else.
“The guy has the best natural hands of anybody in the NFL, because he catches the ball very clean,” White said. “He’s always going downfield. He just goes up and catches the ball at its highest point, which everybody is taught to do. But he just does an excellent job at it, and you can learn a lot from that.”
Just so you know, White can keep learning from Fitzgerald after the Super Bowl in Hawaii.
They’re both in the Pro Bowl.
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