The candle of Dwight Freeney’s playing days flickers.
He is 36 and no longer puts offensive linemen through the spin cycle. He doesn’t render them nearly so dizzy and confused as he used to while compiling 122 1/2 career sacks (18th on the all-time list).
On the Falcons, his third team in four seasons, his playing and practice time are carefully rationed. He is the aging rocker who must carefully pick his spots to break out the high note. He ranks 22nd on his team in tackles and has his lowest sack total (three) of his 14 fullest and healthiest seasons. The man used to have three sacks before his second regular-season check cleared.
Lest all this begin to sound too much like a dirge, it must be mentioned that Freeney is broadly smiling these days.
Going to an NFC Championship game will have that effect, especially if you are the sort who can step back from focusing on the brush strokes and see the whole painting.
“Being in this type of moment — it’s a real special moment,” Freeney said early this week, contemplative amid the heightened frenzy of conference championship week. He could be speaking for any number of Falcons fans who would do well to take a moment, breathe deeply and inhale the rarity of being a part of the NFL’s penultimate weekend.
“It’s some of the reason I keep coming back, keep coming back. You can’t replicate this anywhere — the emotions and feelings you’re going to have,” Freeney said.
Eighteen of the Falcons’ starting 22 never have climbed so high as a conference championship game. Sixteen of the two-deep on the defensive depth chart are new to this experience. Freeney, who was with Arizona a season ago before signing with the Falcons, now has been to consecutive NFC Championship games. He got to the desert last year just in time to get steamrolled 49-15 by Carolina. Still, “I’ve been blessed to be in this situation back-to-back, which doesn’t happen,” he said.
Having played the bulk of an eventful career in Indianapolis — from 2002-12 — he had three AFC Championship game appearances. And a pair of Super Bowls (with split results). Yeah, Freeney is something of an expert in this field.
And you have to know that Freeney knows this very likely is a last act on that familiar stage.
“The appreciation is out the roof as far as awareness of the moment. Awareness of understanding that this is something that’s special,” he said.
“Not that I didn’t know it back then. But after 2006 (his first Super Bowl), I thought it was going to be year in and year out. We finally beat the (nemesis) Patriots, so we’ll get there every year, I was thinking,” Freeney said with a smile.
“This is one more special moment I can appreciate a lot more knowing that this is closer to the tail end of my career rather than the beginning.”
So much of his presence here this season has been in the role of wise man, advisor, the Socrates of the Sack. For both a young defense in general and the emerging pass-rusher Vic Beasley specifically, teaching him the ways of the spin move.
Naturally, then, his counsel for handling the pressures of the semifinals should be valuable as well.
Freeney obliges: “The big thing (to remember) is this is a process that started a long time ago. Understand that we didn’t all of a sudden show up here in this moment because we’re the Falcons. It’s because we put the work in prior to all this. So we have to lean on those principles that we believe in in this locker room, through our training and in practice. That will carry you through the game.
“If you go out and try to make stuff up and try to be something different, that’s when you get into trouble.”
He also is fluent in quarterback. You spend a good part of a career chasing Tom Brady like Ahab did his whale you earn that kind of expertise the hard way.
The target Sunday is Green Bay’s Aaron Rodgers, who is playing at a level that is difficult to quantify as human.
Everyone stay calm, the sage defensive lineman advises. Granted, he’d put Rodgers in the same room with the best he has ever played against.
He is, said Freeney, “A guy who can do everything.”
And, “He makes crucial plays at crucial times.”
But he is abundantly clear that a young and energetic Falcons defense has not voted to stay in the locker room Sunday afternoon rather than to be embarrassed.
“The guy has the ball in his hand all day, so he’s going to make plays. It’s about us making more plays rather than him making all the plays,” Freeney said.
Freeney has faced Rodgers five times over the years, and he has sacked him four times. Three of those came just a year ago when Arizona smothered the Packers. So, there is some precedent. Rodgers is not untouchable, you see.
His 10 postseason sacks ties Freeney for 10th on the all-time list. Just one more would vault him into a tie for fifth. Does he have one more left in him?
“I hope so. You never know. Sacks are tough to get,” he said, before serving a reminder that there is more to life than the sack.
“Hopefully I can help out and contribute — if that happens to be sacks, great. If it’s just getting guys lined up or putting pressure on the quarterback, moving him off the spot, that’s fine.”
Anything to keep the candle flickering, for a week — or two — more.
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