FLOWERY BRANCH --- After four practices without pads, the Falcons will hold their first padded practice Monday.

“We’re just looking to come out here, we’ll add some more situations to the practice,” Falcons coach Arthur Smith said Friday. “We intentionally gave the younger guys more reps today.”

The offensive and defensive lines, both question marks for the team, will start to get some live action.

“I mean we’re going full speed right; it’s all relative, some of the fits inside and without the pads and restrictions,” Smith said. “I mean we had the spiders (light pads) on today, and we’ll continue to add. I think they are competing well, and they’re coming off the football.”

Credit: D. Orlando Ledbetter/AJC

Falcons head coach shares his thoughts after the third day of camp.

The Falcons have been rotating different players as they look for improvement at left guard, center and right tackle.

“We’ve been mixing and matching and saw progress with some of these young guys, and it fires me up,” Smith said. “So, I’m looking forward to going back and looking at the tape and seeing what it looked like.”

The Falcons’ rushing attack will get a fresh look even though they won’t tackle to the ground.

“Where it’s hard is the real run yards, but you can see it on the track and the first to touch and tagging off is the nature of it,” Smith said. “I thought we had some good, at least out there, it certainly looked like we had some positive runs and some stuff to build off of.”

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