Falcons practice notes and quotes for Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2019

It was a Tuesday in Flowery Branch, but for the Falcons, it was “Fast Friday” in their game prep workflow. Fridays are often a shorter practice day, and that was the case on Tuesday.

Now that training camp is complete, only the first 30 minutes of practice are open to the media, so there’s simply not much to report from watching guys go through warmup and some individual drills. But here are the key things you need to know from Tuesday’s practice.

Aug. 20, 2019 notes

• Julio Jones, Foye Oluokun, Russell Gage, Kendall Sheffield, Damontae Kazee, and Tyeler Davison all began practice working off to the side with athletic performance staff.
• Deion Jones is back at practice, and according to Dan Quinn, he has worked his way up to about 50 percent of the practice reps.
• I got my first look at Danny Etling on Tuesday, though it’s hard to assess how he looked since I only saw him in individual drills.

Aug. 20, 2019 quotes

Julio Jones:

• On his contract: “My agent’s in town. Like I said, it’s nothing for me to really report. Just front office business with my agent, Jimmy Sexton ... I didn’t put a timeline on it. Me, I just do what I need to do to stay ready.”
• On Devonta Freeman: “Yeah, he was really excited after his snaps — after a couple of snaps in the game. I can’t remember how many he got — I don’t know if he got one or a few. He looked really good. He was very excited. He came over there, ‘Oh, it feels good to be back out there getting hit,’ you know, and stuff like that. So just being able to see him back out there, though, it was really good to see.”
• On the offensive progress: “They’re coming together. They’re gelling really well. It’s hard to tell for us being at practice — both sides are very competitive. We go at it every day. It’s more so we’re just seeing this game — the starters, they’ll probably play a half or something like that. So we’ll see. From the looks of things at practice, everything’s been looking well.”

Dan Quinn:

• On the focus on Tuesday’s practice: “As we wrap up our preparation, as it goes toward the end of the week, a lot of red zone emphasis for us — both sides, offensively and defensively. That was really what we were looking for today. Crisp, sharp, and if we could have no repeats, that would be where we know we’re making good progress. And efficiency and penalty-free, so that’s kind of the icing on it to go.”
• On guys who won’t play in preseason Week 3: “A couple of guys that we’ll hold out in this week’s game: (Russell) Gage, and (Damontae) Kazee, and (Kaleb) McGary, and (Ty) Sambrailo, and (Kendall) Sheffield. We’ll hold those players and see what their status will be for next week as we’re heading into our final preseason game.”
• On guys who should get some playing time: “A couple of guys we’ll gain back — good to see Hageman, good to see Calhoun getting back into the mix, to name a couple that hadn’t. So this time of year you’re always getting the chance to look at some (guys) in different roles, so looking forward to seeing some of those guys as well.”
• On Marcus Green: “The return side of things: He had one of the kickoff ones. I believe on the return game there were a couple that he didn’t get a chance to. So that’s where we first saw his value on the return side, so we’d love to see him get a catch and with some space, and their punter can hit some big ones. So when they’re backed up, those are your moments. You hold them to a punt in that space, they can rip it and hit it. So if we can do a good job outside of holding up, that’s where you get some moments to do it, so we’ll hopefully see that. On the offensive side, his game is in the slot. How do you get the ball into his hands quickly to go see if he could make some plays. So that’s what we’re looking to see.”
• On Deion Jones: “This was his first week of returning to practice format. And so I’d say he probably had about not quite half the reps today, but into that space. And then next week for practice, I would see him into a full allotment for his practice reps, and then we’ll head him into the game week.”