Hey kids! I'm back, and extremely sunburnt. You must all be so excited.
Right into it, though. The seemingly non-stop rumors about the knee of Peria Jerry are whipping back and forth between "Peria Jerry's knee is fine" and "Peria Jerry's knee now brought to you by Ikea." The latest salvo, from the infrequently reliable ProFootballTalk, assures us that the team is not concerned about the agile defensive tackle's knee and that the injury was bone-based, not ACL.
You may know that Harry Douglas has yet to be cleared for contact drills. What you may not know is that nobody has any clue what's going on with Jerry.
The AJC cheerfully noted recently that there are a ton of whispers about what's going on with Jerry, something we've wondered here at The Falcoholic on numerous occasions. It's evident that the Falcons desperately need him to be healthy, because no matter what you think of Corey Peters, there's very little chance he comes out of the gate and destroys opposing teams like we'd all love to see him do. There's also the little matter of Jon Babineaux's potential suspension.
Because we've written about this situation a million times already, I want to put it to bed until at least training camp, and hopefully the season. I think the best thing we can do right now is apply Occam's Razor. For those unfamiliar, this is a fancy way of saying the simplest explanation is usually the correct one.
In this case, the Falcons likely aren't engaged in some grand conspiracy involving Jerry, Egyptian gold and the tomb of an ancient mage. They're just being tight-lipped because they're an NFL team. And it's likely that Jerry's mending from that injury at a normal rate, which would get him on the field for training camp. Barring any setbacks, he'll likely be one of our two starting tackles in the 4-3.
As much as I hate to say it, go with PFT on this one.