 If I'd like to first start by sending my thoughts and prayers to a lot of people down in South Louisiana that were affected by Hurricane Ida over this past weekend, my wife's from down there, a lot of close family friends who have lost everything and are starting over. Heart pours out to them. I got to spend a little bit of time down in that region when I was coaching at Nickel State and just so many great people that I got to meet and reached out to all of them, everybody's safe, but just a lot of rebuilding that's going to have to take place for a long period of time. Tough couple of days here for us. It's always that way as you transition from training camp preseason over into the regular season, making the roster cuts, but still got some work to do as some players that will come off of the COVID IR. But we're at where we're at and excited to watch these guys compete this fall. With that, I will take some questions. Did you feel like there's some more here in the background? Did you feel like the players on the COVID list maybe give you a little bit of advantage that you can sort of be patient with some guys? Yeah, I don't know if there's really any advantage to the COVID list. I mean, it is what it is. It's the way it's the structure that it's set up. But like I said, we've still got some work to do here over the next couple days. There's got to start to come off of that. You've got to make corresponding moves. We're still working through that, talking through that. But it was a really, really competitive camp. And we'll continue to work through that. I see the big move out of your releases, Fitzpatrick. Your fourth-round pick, you moved up to get him. What went wrong? How did it get to him not being on the roster at this point? Yeah, I mean, I don't know that anything went wrong, T. It's some players, it takes some longer to transition to the pro game. We've seen that before with a lot of our guys. Jerry McNichols was a draft pick. And he's bounced around with several teams and been on practice quads. He's been on our practice squad. He kind of carved out a nice little role for himself here now. Tierra Tartt, Derek Roberson, Logan Woods. I mean, there's a lot of guys that have started there, have continued to work and build and try to improve their skill set, which is what we expect to desk. And I challenged him to come in every single day, work to be better. He knows what the expectation level is. I know the capabilities that he's capable of. And the only one that can change that is him. So we're excited to keep working with him on the practice squad. Specifically, John, where specifically did he come up short relative to what you thought you were getting? I mean, I think there's a lot of areas. He's diligent. He's a hard worker. He's a great guy. There's so much. It's a new playbook, knowing where to line up. How do I execute this? Where do I fit on this run blocking scheme? How am I supposed to run this route? There's a lot of details. He's got the skill set. It's the details and the improvement. He's just got to continue to focus on day in and day out. With the back-of-quarterback situation, guys, where you from at Barclay today? What stands out about Logan Woods side and how has he been able to maintain his hold on this job? Yeah, it was a really close battle. When we made the move early in camp with Deshaun Kaiser and then brought Matt in, I thought it made the position extremely competitive. I thought both of them battled every single day here in camp. And in the pre-season games, I thought Logan played well in the first one. I thought Matt played really well in the second one. And I thought Logan kind of took the range there in the third one. They're both extremely diligent. They're both going to help us this season. Matt Barclay is signing back to our practice squad. Hashtag breaking. So excited to keep working with those guys. It's good to have a veteran guy like Matt here. You're working with us. And he and I talked. And you never know when that opportunity is going to come, to be up on the active roster, to play in the game. This is a long season. It's a tough game. And I know he'll prepare to be up every single day. And to use Barclay as a quarantine guy, will you keep him separate from the team? We'll talk through all that, Dave. Yeah, we're still working through kind of how we're going to set that structurally up. But excited to have him back and continue to work with him. Pretty thank group. Decisions changed with the vaccination. Last year, you had the long onboarding process for new guys this year. If there are facts, you don't have to go through all that. Say that again, Lou, sorry. With the VACs, does that change anything whereas you don't have the onboarding process that you would have had with guys last year? Well, it changes the onboarding process. Yeah, I mean, if they're vaccinated and they meet, they fall under the testing or whatever, they can enter straight away. You don't have to quarantine them and wait. So whatever that testing cadence is and that onboarding process is, that's what we'll follow. Because I don't want to say short term IR today, speak to your health, or does it speak to the freedom you have with the roster right now given the COVID situation? Probably the latter, Paul, probably the latter. We're still working through, like I said earlier, some of the roster things about how we're going to treat some of those guys, how long some of these bumps and bruises are going to take. I think the rule that passed that the return to play the short term IR is beneficial for all clubs so that you have access to all your players. I want to say for me, Mackay, Sergeant, to earn himself the spot on the initial 53 and how much did injuries and maybe Jeremy going on the COVID list kind of complicate that position for you? I saw a guy who we handed and we handed him the ball. He was decisive as a runner. He hit the hole. He tried to run through contact when somebody tried to tackle him. If we scored a touchdown and he was in there, he went and lined up on the kickoff team, ran through whoever was trying to block him and tried to smoke the guy with a ball. So I think when you have that approach to your position, to the game of football, it's certainly made my decision and Mike's decision a lot easier to keep a guy like that around. Pretty big, yeah. I'm a lot of defensive backs on the initial roster, 13. A lot of them are our safeties, just kind of what went into that decision to keeping so many of those guys at that position. Yeah, I mean, I think, again, the rosters and Flux. But I mean, all those guys earned the right to be here. They all have different roles. Some of them are more special teams. Some of them are more defensive players. But we're still looking at the roster as a whole and trying to decide numerically how many we need to keep at this position or that position. In anticipation for how we're going to attack the fall with respect to guys that are going to come off COVID here at some point. You guys haven't always had a real big depth at wide receiver. How difficult was this year's group to make those decisions? A lot of arguments for a lot of guys, I guess. Yeah, it was not a fun thing to work through. But it was something that I'm proud that we had to work through that and trying to make some hard decisions. I'm excited that Mason Kenzie's back. I mean, I thought he had a heck of a preseason. And he's grateful for the opportunity. But all of those guys, we were fortunate to have some depth there at that position. And we're going to need guys at some point. Like I said, it's the same thing when we're talking about the quarterback position. You're going to need guys to step up at some point. Fortunately for us, we've got some depth there and can lean on those guys. Any idea in terms of how long Marcus Johnson and Josh Reynolds will be before they're up to 100% anyway? Yeah, I haven't met with Todd yet. We had some of those guys in today still working through treatment plans and anticipation of when they're going to be back out here. But both of those guys have certainly had really good camps and excited to work with them. What is it for Levin to come in here? He's got some experience here that he can just kind of slide right in and pick up where he left off when he left. It saved us a flight, that's for sure. Because when I called him and asked him, how do we need you in New York where to get you down? I said, no, I'm in Nashville. I was like, OK, well, we'll just gas up the tank and drive over. But no, he knows the system. Obviously, we drafted him here. He'd been on the roster a little bit. And when I went back and watched through the preseason games, he was a guy that played both guard spots. He played center. He played a lot of snaps. I thought they were really, really competitive snaps when he was in there. He stylistically, he plays the way we play. And from a scheme standpoint, he knows the scheme. He knows Keith. And it was good to get him back to provide some depth in there for us. John, the Falcons owner said yesterday that Julio Jones not practicing over years was kind of a sticking point with the coaches in front office there. Are you concerned at all about that long term with him here? No, I mean, I know he prepares every single day. He's in here early. He's working to make sure he's ready to go. He did some stuff yesterday, you know, and we'll kind of see how it goes the rest of the week. And I'm excited to watch him out there on Sundays. One decision it looks like you guys maybe went with kind of an upside and potential with Roberson over a vet like Simon. Is that accurate? Is that basically what it come down to? Yeah, you know, I thought that, you know, Roby has, he was kind of up and down last year for us. But I thought he really did an outstanding job of in the off season, dedicating himself to improving. It certainly showed in practices, showed up in the games. I thought he was executing the games and the stunts and some of the stuff that we ran technique-wise, what we asked of him much better. And thought that he earned the spot. Thought he earned the spot. What would you say has changed for Thierre Tarkin? Last year at this time, he was one of the guys probably like sweating about making a roster. Now here he is, a possible starter. Great off season for Thierre, you know, continues to work on consistency. He's a big, strong man that has length, that has power to create knockback at the point of attack. And, you know, he's got some power to push the pocket on the pass as a rusher in there. Really did a great job of dedicating himself, I'd say much like Roby in the off season program, to changing his body. I told him, you know, I poked him in the shoulder and I said, you've got bumps where you're supposed to have bumps now. I'm not hitting bone, I'm hitting meat. So he did a really good job of working out and changing his body, you know, getting it ready for the NFL season. Started to become clear that Daquan Jones would be back to deserve a conversation where he came to. I know this is an opportunity. What do I need to do? Yeah, I think these guys kind of see that. You know, he's got a great relationship with Big T, Coach Williams, our D-line coach. And, you know, T's pretty frank with those guys. He's pretty upfront and honest with what the expectation level is. And I know Tiair took that to heart. He's got a great relationship with him and challenged him. You know, challenged him to step his game up because we all saw the ability. It was about Tiair dedicating himself, which he has. And I'm proud of him. It was another one that I think was on the practice squad or, you know, he was cut last year. He kind of bounced around for us. And now he's going to play a lot of meaningful snaps for us. I told us lately about the drastic difference in culture from when he got here to what you guys have now, if you were kind of to classify what you and Mike have been able to do in that department, how would you do it? Yeah, I mean, I think we treat these guys, you know, the way that they treat the team and they respect the team and we respect them. We work hard. We push each other. The players push each other. They enjoy coming to work every single day. And you can have honest and frank conversations. We hold each other accountable. And it's fun, you know, and we've got a bunch of good guys in there that are about the team. They're about working hard. They're about committing themselves to a team effort. And they enjoy coming to practice. I mean, that was one of the things that Mackay said after the Falcons game. He put his arm around me. He's like, I can't. Can we practice tomorrow? I'm ready to go. I'm like, Mackay, you got to get a day off, buddy. This ain't Iowa. I don't know what Kirk was doing. That's the type of guys that we have in the locker room. Guys that love ball and want to come to work every single day and commit themselves to helping their teammates win. How much did it do for your peace of mind and maybe everybody's in the building to make the decision at kicker relatively early the way you did? Yeah, I think Sam, you know, he's done a great job. He's kicked before in the league. So to be able to add him and him come to a new environment, assimilate himself to the way we do things, formed a great bond with Brad and Morgan, the timing and the snack because all that stuff is important and where does he want the ball plays? How does he want it tilted? All of that stuff plays into the kicker. And he's done a great job. They got on the same page quickly. He's been really good for us. And I'm excited to see him kick it through those yellow things this fall. Hopefully the P.A.T.'s. Sorry, you're surprised Dylan hasn't been able to get in the mix at right tackling at this point. Where do you see his future? Yeah, he's another, I mean, he's a guy that, you know, it's a smaller school in North Dakota State. I think they won 48 national championships in a row or something like that. But, you know, they didn't play last year and he played one game and then he played in the senior bowl. So he kind of missed a year of football a little bit. He's gotten better. He's gotten better with his hands. He's got to learn to continue to use his length and lean on his technique. You know, that's the big thing with offensive line play. It's about the technique that Keith and Sully, that those guys work day in and day out when you get yourself into, I would say, a precarious position as an offensive lineman. The defensive linemen in this league aren't the ones that you played against in college. And you can't get away with just trying to manhandle or maul somebody because you're bigger and stronger than them. These guys that you're going against are the same size and bigger, if not stronger than you are. So you've got to focus on that technique. And, you know, for offensive line play, that's, we teach things a certain way and it's learning a new skill set. You know, it's, I don't know how to write calligraphy, but I would imagine it would be like, you know, you're writing in cursive and then you got to try to write calligraphy and it's different. There's some things that are similar, but he's focusing on those details, those technique things. He's getting better every single day. He stays out here after practice and works on his, you know, his stances and his punches and all that stuff. So I'm excited about the upside of it. Do you think he's a tackle ultimately long-term and do you think like this year he's a reserve interior guy? I think the cool thing about him is that he can play several spots. You know, I think he can play guard and he can play tackle. There's some players that when we evaluate him and that's one of the things we said in the evaluation is, he's a player who can play a couple of different positions and that's valuable in the NFL. Sometimes they're only a guard or they're only a tackle and it's kind of hard. It's hard for those guys to stick if they're not the top backup or the starter. So his versatility is, it's certainly going to pay off for him and for us. First Caleb in terms of readiness, I don't remember, I mean, you guys talked about the back but I don't remember you talking about knocking or rust off and him not playing last year and not being in the position for a long time. Yeah, I think Paul, he's another one that's steadily gotten better. He broke up a pass yesterday in practice. It's his technique too, it's understanding leverage. It's understanding where your help at. Help is if you've got safety help or if you've got people inside of you, you can push those routes in there to your inside, help coverage-wise and kind of peel off. Learning those things, learning the techniques that we teach, he's steadily gotten better in my eyes from a movement standpoint, from a technique standpoint, practice after practice. After an off-season where you had the reduced salary cap, all that, how confident are you with it the roster you put together now is improved from the team that lost at Baltimore? I mean, I think everybody's optimistic. I mean, there's 32 teams that are optimistic that they're gonna go where everybody wants to go. We're all ultimately going for the same goal. Our short-term goal is to get ready for Arizona and we're gonna take it week by week. That's what we believe in. When you start looking too far ahead at the ultimate goal, there's some things along the way, some hurdles along the way that can trip you up. So I mean, it's a week to week league. That's how we've always approached it is focusing on our opponent, which right now it's Arizona. Get ready for those guys and trying to start the season off right. Snuck one in there, Jim. How good to get Mike back and you feel like you and him and maybe the staff made the best of what was a tough situation? We tried. I'm tired of blowing the whistle, Jim. But it's good to have him back. I mean, he's such a great leader on the practice field. The players respect him. He's got a wealth of knowledge about the game of football in all three phases. He's a teacher. He works to inspire guys to go out every single day and improve. So to have him back leading the football team, he had a grin on his face this morning as he was parking his truck and walking in.