Players may not be in pads, and they may not be hitting. But for Dante Fowler, everything is still moving at a fast pace.
Unable to work with his new team throughout the entire offseason, the Falcons defensive end still has absorbed plenty of new information about his new defense. But only now has Fowler been able to apply it on the practice field, albeit in a walk-through atmosphere.
While the coaching staff has tried to simulate the installation process as best as possible during the virtual offseason, that’s not nearly the same as being able to act out the plays on the practice field. This week marked the first baby steps the Falcons were able to take to produce new muscle memory among their players.
And as Fowler said, it’s a lot of information to process at once.
“As far as getting in the playbook, everything is going super fast,” Fowler said. “It’s like the first day of camp. We’re on the field, but we’re going through walk-throughs. It’s going really fast. They’re drilling us and putting the pressure on us to know everything because we got to be on top of our stuff. We don’t have time to teach everything because the other stuff we already went through in virtual meetings. Now that we’re here, we’ll probably do a virtual meeting the night before, and the next day we’re walking through it at 8 o’clock in the morning.”
Fowler signed a three-year, $45 million deal with the Falcons this offseason with the hopes of bolstering a pass rush that ranked 31st in the NFL in 2019 with 28 total sacks. Fowler, who spent the past season and a half with the Los Angeles Rams, is coming off the best season of his five-year career, which saw him accrue 11.5 sacks.
When it comes to his utilization in Atlanta, Fowler’s fit often has been likened to how he was used with the Jacksonville Jaguars, the team that drafted him third overall in 2015. That comparison has come up since former Jaguars coach Gus Bradley and Falcons coach Dan Quinn both came from Pete Carroll’s staff in Seattle.
However, Fowler said his role with the Falcons will be similar to how he was used in Los Angeles. Whereas the Jaguars had him rushing the passer from a three-point stance, the Rams opted for a more versatile role. Fowler expects to stand up as a rusher, move around the formation and be placed in situations to, “put my hand in the dirt and pin my ears back.”
“The (Rams') coaches got all the potential that they could get out of me,” Fowler said. “They knew the good things that I could do, they knew what was going to put me in the right situations to be elite and a good football player. They weren’t stubborn. They knew whatever they could do to get sacks and make the team better, that’s what they did. I really appreciated them for that, to let me blossom and lead me to being the player I am going to be.”
Falcons running back Todd Gurley knows what Fowler can bring to the table as a defender. In college, Fowler wasn’t afraid to scrap with Gurley during the 2013 game between Georgia and Florida, which ended in a 23-20 victory for the Bulldogs. The two got heated with one another during the game, which included a moment where Fowler was caught on camera poking his finger inside Gurley’s face mask.
The two have since become friends and spent the past year and a half as teammates on the Rams. Wearing a red and white facemask during his virtual interview with reporters, Gurley said he is thrilled to have Fowler -- who shares the same Aug. 3 birthday -- as a teammate again.
“I’m smiling behind this mask because that’s my guy,” Gurley said. “I’ve been competing against him since the Georgia-Florida days and to be able to share a birthday with him and be with the Rams last year and bring our talent all the way to Atlanta, it means a lot. … Always been a great teammate and always been a good guy and a great competitor, too.”
Fowler believes he turned a corner in his career last season, seeing that in the four previous years before his 2019 campaign, he combined for 20 sacks. He began his career in Jacksonville with an ACL injury during OTAs and was never more than a third-down pass rusher with the franchise after that.
Traded to Los Angeles during the 2018 season, Fowler became a rotational player on a Rams’ team that reached Super Bowl LIII at Mercedes-Benz Stadium but fell short against the New England Patriots. Last season, as a starter for the first time in his career, Fowler finally felt he was beginning to reach the potential placed on him as a third overall draft pick.
Fowler’s goal in 2020 is to further validate his standing as someone who can be considered a premier pass rusher in the NFL.
“This is what I have to do this year,” Fowler said. “This is the year to put (the criticism) to rest. I put that on myself. My first few years in the league I had some bumps, some growing and learning curves. That happens to the best of us. I’m happy it happened to me earlier than in my later years.
“Some people out here have had a lot of great accolades in the beginning and probably didn’t know how to handle it. Now they don’t know how to handle it and you see what’s going on. I’m happy that it happened to be early in my career. So now that I know that already, I can be a pro for another 10 years.”
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