Falcons linebacker Sean Weatherspoon played at Missouri and has watched the St. Louis Rams turn into one of the NFL’s upstarts under coach Jeff Fisher.
In an exclusive Q&A with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Weatherspoon, who will face the Rams for the second time in his career Sunday at the Georgia Dome, talked about the Rams, his upcoming charity event, the Syrian conflict and his thoughts on the Eagles’ offense.
Here’s what Weatherspoon had to say:
Q: How important will it be to get some pressure on Rams quarterback Sam Bradford?
A: It's big for Sam. He's an ascending quarterback. He's getting better and better. I feel like if you can get pressure on him, you can make his eyes come down from looking at the routes. We want to get some people around him and try to make him move a little bit. Hopefully, that will work out in our favor. You can't let him stay in the pocket. … My rookie year when we played against him, we actually went down to St. Louis, and I feel like we moved him off the spot. We want to replicate that a little bit. It's a different scheme, and they have a different head coach (Fisher). … We have a pretty good feel for him. It's going to be about moving him around and getting him off his spot so that he can't look downfield and find those receivers. (Bradford had a 91.3 completion percentage last week when unpressured. When pressured it went down to 40 percent, according to profootballfocus.com.)
Q: What’s the charity function that you have coming up?
A: It's a celebrity waiter night on Nov. 4 at Ocean Prime. All of the proceeds will go to my foundation Spoon Full of Hope. We aim to help less-fortunate kids in the inner-city area by going back to school events and helping them with supplies. … We'll be feeding families around the holidays.
Q: How does it feel to do that type of community work?
A: It's awesome. It gives me a sense of worthiness. … It's not even about the blessings or whatever, it's about doing what's right.
Q: When you get away from football do you look at national events like what’s happening in Syria?
A: Yeah, man. The president came on my TV pretty late the other night. I like to watch the head man when he's talking. I support President Obama. There is definitely something going on over there in Syria. We know that something is not going on right. It's going to come to our door sooner or later, so I figure they'll do a good job by getting over there and get things going the right way.
Q: Did you see the Eagles game (on “Monday Night Football”)? What did you think of the offense?
A: You definitely have to be prepared to line up to their formations. They do a lot of formations that the NFL has not seen. It's new. It's successful right now. What I saw was a lot of one-on-one matchups. I think it's going to work for them. I think the key to it is can they sustain it? They run a lot of plays.
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