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If there’s one thing athletes are great at besides their chosen sports, it’s confusing people via social media. Behold a master at work.
There is nothing about this that clearly indicates whether Sean Weatherspoon is going to return to the Atlanta Falcons in 2017 or not. I would normally say the fact that he hasn’t signed up to this point isn’t a good sign, but for a couple of factors.
- The Falcons actually don’t have a ton of depth at linebacker;
- The Falcons have shown a willingness to wait until after the draft to sign veterans to shore up positions they weren’t able to address.
Taken together with Weatherspoon’s “I’m gonna show Atlanta how I’m feeling in a couple months or so” message, this could very well suggest the Falcons will be looking to bring ‘Spoon back if they don’t make a major upgrade at linebacker in April. They may even have communicated that to him, hence this cryptic Instagram message. But as always when these things crop up, we can’t be certain.
The Atlanta Falcons currently have Deion Jones, De’Vondre Campbell, LaRoy Reynolds, and Josh Keyes under contract as full-time linebackers, with Vic Beasley, Brooks Reed, and Kemal Ishmael likely to get some time at the position. To say that leaving that position as is would be a mistake would be to understate things, so they’re going to draft and/or sign someone.
I will always love ‘Spoon, so I wouldn’t mind seeing him come back. The reality is that the Falcons still need to get younger at linebacker, though, and ‘Spoon simply hasn’t been able to stay on the field and healthy for a while now. We’ll see how this one plays out.