GMFB’s Nate Burleson speaks to Julio Jones’ vitality for Falcons

As we all swirl around about the possibility of Julio Jones wanting a raise, and missing voluntary May practices, Good Morning Football’s Nate Burleson spoke about which of the OTA holdouts were most important to their team.

No surprise, but he went with the Jet.

Burleson, a former NFL receiver himself, knows a thing or two about what makes a pro offense go and stop, and he knows how crucial it is for the Falcons to have Jones active and going in the lineup. Indeed, his words couldn’t ring truer: if something happened to Jones, or for some aghast reason, he were to one day not be in the lineup, this offense would lose its key dimension, and the train would come rolling into the station far earlier than any of us would hope.

Jones missing OTAs isn’t the end of the world. As we saw with the Chargers’ young TE Hunter Henry, sadly, players can still get hurt this time of year. Jones knows what he has to do to stay in shape and to get ready, and Dan Quinn has already said he expects Jones to be ready to go for June’s mandatory minicamp.

Please just go ahead and accept the fact that Jones is going to get an extension either this season or the next that will make him perhaps the highest-paid receiver in the league (until the next deal pops up), and be glad he gives Atlanta one of the, on paper, scariest offenses in the NFL. He’s critical to whatever Atlanta tries to do offensively, and his impact on the team, and how he makes defenses scheme for the Falcons, can never be misstated.

Never undervalue what having a player like Jones does for Atlanta. Life would be much, much harder, and much, much less fun, if he were not around. Let’s hope he is for many years to come.