Falcons coach Mike Smith dismissed the notion that his team was widely viewed as a finesse bunch and lacked toughness.
The NFL Network crew up trashed the Falcons before they faced the Saints on Thursday, Nov. 21.
Smith was asked about it after that game and in his season-ending press conference last week. He generally took umbrage with the entire notion.
Falcons owner Arthur Blank addressed the issue of “toughness” in his end-of-season media chat on Monday.
While Blank doesn’t plan to stop taking character into consideration with the Falcons assess players, he wants some tougher players.
Here are his poignant thoughts on the issue of toughness:
“I want to be transparent with my answer. . . .I’m going to give you a little different answer than what Smitty gave you last week. He was asked a question about how tough our team was. I read his answer. In many ways I would agree with him and in some ways I would not agree with it. I think the nature of the game is that it is a physically violent game. It is a tough game. To play football at the professional level, the college level and even the high school level, you’re got to be a tough kid. A tough person.
“I think a lot of our players are certainly that. I think, at the end of the day, if I asked you as a player, to give me brief definition of what toughness is, I think you might say something to me (like), ‘It’s how you control the line of scrimmage. Can you run the ball? Can you stop the run? Can you run the ball? Can you stop the run? You’ve got pass to put up points in the NFL, we understand that. I don’t think we did either one of those things very well this year. I would say if you look at toughness from that perspective, I don’t think we were as tough as we needed to be.
“It doesn’t mean that we want players that are going to end up in different sections of the newspaper other than the sports section. But I think we do want players that have the capacity to be tough and as tough as they need to be, to play right up to the line, to the edge of the line and we need coaches that are prepared to coach them that way as well.”
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