Falcons rookie Robert Alford will provide a weekly diary for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution this season.
The Hammond, La., native, who played at Southeastern Louisiana, has played significantly as a rookie. This week, he’s getting ready to face Buffalo and and spend time covering Bills wide receiver Stevie Johnson.
Here’s his latest installment, as told to D. Orlando Ledbetter.
I’m just thankful to be alive. I mean, God has really blessed me this year. I’m living out my childhood dream just being out there with these guys and playing the game that I love to play.
Right now, my girlfriend is down here, and she is going to cook. We’ll have the usual, turkey, ham, sweet-potato pie, cheese baguettes and some rolls. The cheese baguettes are my favorite.
That’s something that my mom cooks the best. For me, that’s just what I like.
After that, I’m looking forward to the trip to Toronto. This is going to be my first time out of the U.S. I’m going to enjoy this trip, and hopefully we’ll come back with a win. That would make the trip more enjoyable.
We’ll have a tough challenge with the Bills receivers. They have a good receiving corps. They have a lot of speed. (Marquise) Goodwin, I think he almost went to the Olympics or was concentrating on going to the Olympics instead of playing football. They have a lot of speed out there, and they have Stevie (Johnson). He has a lot of moves out of his routes. It’s just something where we must have our techniques down pat and execute like Coach told us to do this week.
That was a big turnaround we had against the Saints. We were very happy that we were able to (hold them to 17 points) because they have a good quarterback in Drew Brees. He’s not just someone that you shut down like that. We need that to roll over to every week. We have to go out there execute and make sure that we do our fundamentals right.
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