After the final gun in Sunday’s 30-14 Falcons win eliminated his team from playoff contention, Saints linebacker Junior Galette said it felt like “a funeral” in the locker room.
It was an interesting choice of words. During the week leading up to the game, Saints cornerback Keenan Lewis said that the team planned on sending the Falcons to their funeral, a bit of trash talk that the Falcons didn’t answer when meeting with the media. They saved their response for the field and the postgame meetings with reporters instead.
Wide receivers Roddy White and Harry Douglas both pointed out that Lewis had to come out of the game to get an IV at one point, with Douglas saying that you “can’t send us to a funeral you’re not showing up for.”
“If you’re going to go out there and be talking about funerals and arranging funerals and bringing in flowers and doing all that stuff, you’ve got to finish the game,” White said, via ESPN.com. “Unfortunately, he didn’t even play the whole game. ... Today, at [3:48 p.m.], we just woke up out the grave. So right now, we’re going to get ready for next week.”
For his part, Lewis tipped his cap to Atlanta and said they deserved to move on to a Week 17 date with the Panthers that will decide the race for the NFC South crown. That means there will be another funeral with the Falcons trying to again send the wreath rather than receive it,.