With just about 10 minutes remaining in the 4th quarter of the Atlanta Falcons’ third preseason game against the Miami Dolphins, the Falcons hold a 16-6 lead and seem poised to improve their preseason record to 2-1.
Being that it’s so late in the game, the starters are long since done for the night, including All World tight end Tony Gonzalez.. The future Hall of Famer did haul in 3 passes for 30 yards during the first half. The performance was nothing spectacular, but it was nevertheless a nice reminder that Atlanta will still be heading into the new year with one of the league’s more capable tight ends.
On Thursday, Gonzalez joined The Dan Patrick Show to talk about a number of interesting topics – the evolution of the tight end in the NFL since his career began, how and why he thinks the tight end position is one of the absolute hardest in the game, still being hungry as ever to win a Super Bowl, and several other interesting topics compliments of Patrick’s good interviewing skills.
What he thought when people said that Tim Tebow could play tight end:
“I thought it was ridiculous. It is not an easy position to me, maybe I am being biased. But to me it is the second hardest position on the offensive side of the ball because, obviously the quarterback is number one, but you have to know every blocking scheme. You have got to know all of those calls that the lineman have to yell out because you are part of the running game and then you have to know everything in the receiving game. The receivers just have to worry about, they hear a run called, oh I have got to block the guy in front of me, it is real simple. But the blocking scheme at the tight end is as hard as just like the offensive lineman but then you have got to know passes, the hot routes. You are all over the field so it is tough.”
Whether he thinks he has Hall-of-Fame-type numbers already:
“I don’t know. I am looking at Shannon Sharpe and they won’t let him the Hall yet and he should be there in my opinion. When he retired he led in every category statistically and had three Super Bowl rings and he is still not in the Hall of Fame… I don’t know what it is. What does it take?”
Hopefully when you hear from us next, the Falcons will have finished off the ’Fins in what thus far has been a fairly impressive performance by Atlanta.
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