Marlon Davidson, Matt Hennessy return to practice Monday ahead of Week 1

We’re here! This is the first full week of game preparation for the Falcons this year, with a Week 1 matchup against the Seattle Seahawks looming. The team comes into the matchup looking solid and pretty healthy, and they got more good news on that front today.

Per Dan Quinn, rookies Matt Hennessy and Marlon Davidson are back in action at the team’s admittedly limited holiday practice.

This is great news, though moreso for Hennessy than Davidson. We’ve already been told that the rookie defensive tackle will be easing back in after missing a considerable number of practices with a knee injury, and the team held on to both Deadrin Senat and Jacob Tuioti-Mariner to ensure they had enough depth on the interior, though Tuioti-Mariner can play both end and tackle. I’d look for him to make a limited debut as soon as this week, but he won’t be systems go for a couple of games, I’d wager.

Hennessy, meanwhile, is the presumptive starting left guard and a player the Falcons need healthy for Week 1. The team is expected to release a depth chart a little later today that will tell us for sure whether Hennessy is starting, but as long as he’s close to 100% that would be my expectation. If he can’t go, the presumption is that James Carpenter would start for him, though I’d obviously prefer Matt Gono did.

I’m looking forward to seeing how the depth chart shakes out for Atlanta, but for now this is just another spot of good news for what we hope will be an effective Falcons team in 2020.