Falcons give top pick Jerry royal treatment

Flowery Branch — When your life changes overnight, it’s OK if the night is a short one.

Falcons first-round pick Peria Jerry, the defensive tackle from Ole Miss, was asked how much sleep he got Saturday night — between getting the call in Hattiesburg, Miss., and arriving suit-clad Sunday morning at the Falcons complex.

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Kent Johnson/kjohnson@ajc.com

Falcons head coach Mike Smith shares a smile with first-round draft pick Peria Jerry, Sunday at Flowery Branch.

FALCONS' DRAFT

Day 1
• Falcons pick defense on first day
• Top pick Jerry introduced • Photos
• Williams eager to join secondary

Day 2
• Defensive focus continues
• Owens covers all corners
• Sidbury adds quick burst at DE
• Local product Middleton has smarts
• Walker stays close to home

• Schultz: Foundation for future
• Bradley: Smart moves

• Falcons' picks: Jerry | Moore | Owens | Sidbury | Middleton | Reynolds | Adkins | Walker
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• Round: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7

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“Just a tad,” he said. And he smiled.

The Falcons had flown Jerry, his mother and sister in on Arthur Blank’s private jet, along with second-round pick William Moore and his mother. They arrived at 2 a.m. at Chateau Elan, where they spent the night.

The big ol’ country guy, as Falcons GM Thomas Dimitroff called Jerry, said it was just an extension of the royal treatment he’d felt from the Falcons since they brought him in for a visit a week ago.

“I had told my sister a couple days before, ‘I really think I’m going to Atlanta,’ ” Jerry said. “They were the only team that worked me out. They put me in this big house on the lake [Lake Lanier]. I’m like, ‘Yeah, this is really nice right here.’ It’s a blessing to be here.”

Jerry is from Batesville, Miss., a town of 7,600. He grew up hunting, fishing and riding horses. His father farms. His mother, who split from his father when Jerry was a teenager, has worked one job after another to raise seven children.

Onethia has worked at an auto parts plant. She drove a school bus. She tended to the salad bar at the Western Sizzler. Now she paints coffin handles at the Batesville Casket Co.

She used to work the midnight shift until she was injured when a 100-pound barrel fell on her leg. For that, they moved her to the day shift.

So when you ask Jerry where he gets the motor that Dimitroff talks about, that unrelenting energy that helped make him the second defensive tackle taken in the draft, he looks in one direction.

“From my mom,” Jerry said. “She’s a hard worker.”

Onethia also recognized the value of football for Peria. When his father frowned on it, his mother covered his chores for him, and he played junior high football without his dad knowing.

By the time he was in high school, his father heard his name called repeatedly in radio broadcasts of South Panola High games. By then, Jerry was on his way, and not close enough to his father for it to make much of a difference.

On Sunday, his mother sat proudly in the front row of Jerry’s introductory news conference wearing a red Falcons cap, with the words written in black Sharpie ink: “To Mom, Peria Jerry, 98.”

“All I want him to do is be happy,” she says.

He sure looked it Sunday.

“Who would have ever thought? Country boy, small town, Batesville, Miss.,” said his sister Penisha Peppers, 27. “First he gets past the high school level and gets to college level. In the NFL? Wow.”