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The Falcons wisely tied some of Dontari Poe’s contract incentives to his weight. Wisely not because Poe was a threat to show up to training camp looking like Grady Jackson, but because the team wants him to play a little lighter in 2017, and it’s not exactly easy to shed a bunch of pounds when you weigh nearly 350.
The team is looking for Poe to be more of a penetrator in this scheme than he was asked to be in Kansas City, while still remaining a force against the run. That’s a balancing act, but the upshot is that Poe needed to lose some weight, and it looks like he’s well on his way there.
Initial Falcons' weigh-in calls for Dontari Poe to be 340 pounds https://t.co/1oN3v9YZDO
— vaughn mcclure (@vxmcclure23) May 30, 2017
Poe will be asked to get down to 330 pounds or less, a mark he’ll have to hit three times between July and November if he wants lots and lots of sweet, sweet cash. Initially, though, he just needs to get to 340 or less for June 13th, the start of the Falcons’ mandatory minicamp, and he appears to be wisely applying himself to the task.
We’ll talk more about Poe’s potentially transformative presence in the defense soon, but for now, it’s nice to see him doing what he can to get things off on the right foot with his new team.