Tony Gonzalez is back, and he’s ready to jump right in.
After going through a “virtual training camp” so he could spend time with his family, the veteran tight end is going to hit the ground running, as he’ll start and play regular minutes against the Titans Saturday night.
“Tony is in great shape like he always is,” Falcons coach Mike Smith said, via D. Orlando Ledbetter of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “He’ll play just like the rest of the starters.”
Gonzalez missed most of training camp to spend time with his family, which was part of the deal to get him to come back for a 17th season. But tight ends coach Chris Scelfo kept in touch, ad they watched practice nightly on iPads.
“Yeah, we have the iPad with all of the plays on there and all of the installation that you’re going to need,” Gonzalez said. “There is nothing that they saw that I didn’t see. I got to see everything. It beams right to the iPad. I would watch it every night and see what they did in practice every day.”
Now, he’s going to go from watching it to doing it.