Falcons Seek Revenge as Rodgers and Packers Return

(Reuters) – The Atlanta Falcons have revenge and Aaron Rodgers on their mind when they face the champion Green Bay Packers Sunday in a rematch of last season’s NFC divisional playoff game.

Packers quarterback Rodgers had the game of his life in last January’s playoff meeting against the NFC’s top-seeded Falcons and, ominously for Atlanta, he returns in top form.

The Packers are one of two teams still undefeated in the 2011 campaign and Rodgers, named most valuable player of last season’s Super Bowl, has already amassed 1,325 passing yards.

In the 48-21 playoff win over Atlanta in the Georgia Dome last season, Rodgers went 31-of-36 for 366 yards, threw three touchdowns and ran in for another score as the Packers ended the Falcons’ Super Bowl dreams.

Atlanta head coach Mike Smith knows that his team cannot afford to give Rodgers time and space to exploit in the way he did, with his superb footwork, last season.

“It’s going to be important for us this week to try to be disruptive and not let (Rodgers) get comfortable in terms of his pocket presence … something that we learned is that he can really make some plays with his feet,” said Smith.

“He was able to have a presence to get away from pressure and get the ball down the field. You watch this guy operate, and I don’t know if there’s a quarterback in the NFL right now that’s playing more efficiently.”

Atlanta strengthened well in the offseason after a 13-3 record in the 2010 campaign but will be somewhat disappointed to only be 2-2 at this stage.

Nonetheless, last week’s 30-28 win at Seattle will have given Smith’s team a timely boost in confidence ahead of the visit from the champion Packers.

“We came out last week and executed really well,” said quarterback Matt Ryan, “We were good on third downs and we put ourselves in good third down situations. We were able to extend those drives. I think that was what was the difference in our start last week.”

Ryan knows that Atlanta cannot afford to turn the ball over like that did in such a costly fashion during their playoff loss to Green Bay when they had four turnovers.

“One of things that we didn’t do well last year was ball security. We turned the football over a couple of times, me specifically, especially in the first half and we put ourselves in a tough spot,” said Ryan.

“It comes down to us protecting the football a little bit better than we did last year and that’ll help us run the football.”

Other Week Five matchups include an AFC East divisional encounter where the New York Jets visit Tom Brady and the New England Patriots – always a game with a little extra spice and another repeat from last year’s playoffs.

The Jets won that game 28-21 but New England have the top overall offense in the league and Brady leads the league with 1,553 passing yards.

The undefeated Detroit Lions host the Chicago Bears (2-2) Monday.

(Reporting by Simon Evans in Miami; Editing by Frank Pingue)

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For Matthews Clan, N.F.L. Is All in the Family

“We’re going to try to get him something a little more noble than running into somebody for a living,” said his grandfather, Clay Matthews Jr.

No family has infiltrated the league the way the Matthewses have. They might be considered the Mannings for the head-knocking set. For now, five Matthews men have played in the N.F.L., bridging three generations and including the current linebacker , whose (11-6) will take the field against the Falcons (13-3) on Saturday in an N.F.C. divisional playoff game. More may be on the way shortly. Odds are decent that Brodie will join them in 2033 or so.

“You know, there’s a Lord in the world that blesses you sometimes,” said , a defensive lineman for the in the 1950s.

The patriarch cannot quite explain how it is that four of his progeny followed him to the N.F.L., but he believes the numbers will grow. When Matthews Sr. was born 82 years ago, he weighed 10 pounds 4 ounces, he said, same as his newly arrived great-grandson.

“Are you asking me if it’s something I did?” he said. “No, it’s nothing I did. I’m just thankful to have them.”

Matthews Sr. and his late wife, Daisy, had five children. Among them were and , who each played 19 seasons in the N.F.L. and combined to reach 18 Pro Bowls. Clay Jr. played linebacker, mostly for the . Bruce was an offensive lineman for the Houston Oilers and . He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2007.

Each of those sons spawned another N.F.L. player roughly in his own mold. Clay Matthews III is in his second year with the Packers. One of the game’s best players — on Thursday he was named the N.F.L.’s defensive player of the year by Sporting News — Matthews III is recognized for his tirelessness on the field and the stringy hair that hangs from his helmet.

On the other side of the family, Bruce Matthews’s burly batch of Texas linemen includes Kevin, an undrafted rookie this season who made the Titans and started their last game at center.

According to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, only two other families have had three generations of N.F.L. players, but neither had five family members play in the league. Only the Nessers had more family members in the league than the Matthews family, with six brothers playing in the early 1920s — five for the Columbus Panhandles in 1921, the year before the American Professional Football Association was renamed the N.F.L.

Reinforcements could be on the way. Clay Matthews III’s brother Casey was a starting linebacker for Oregon in this week’s title game against Auburn, and is expected to be chosen in April’s N.F.L. draft. Casey Matthews forced the fumble by quarterback Cam Newton that allowed Oregon to tie the score with two and a half minutes left.

Among their cousins, Kevin Matthews’s brother Jake started most of last season at right tackle as a true freshman at Texas AM. Another brother, Mike, is in high school and is being heavily recruited. The youngest boy, 11-year-old Luke, “is probably going to be the biggest one,” his father said.

It seems that at this rate, in five or six generations, every N.F.L. team might have a few Matthewses on the roster.

“I guess once we get going on something, we’re hard-headed enough to keep doing it,” Clay Matthews Jr. said. “Maybe there’s something wrong with us.”

About a year ago, Casey Matthews told his father that he wanted to pursue an N.F.L. career when he finished at Oregon.

“I said, ‘You realize all that entails and the odds of making it, don’t you?’ ” Matthews Jr. said.

For a Matthews boy, it’s about 1 in 2.

Clay Matthews Sr. played football at in the late 1940s. The son of the longtime boxing coach at The Citadel, H. L. Matthews, who was known as Matty, Clay Matthews was also a boxer, a wrestler and a diver. He was big for his time — about 6 feet 3 inches, 220 pounds.

He was a 25th-round draft choice of the Los Angeles Rams in 1949. Before he heard that news, Matthews was traded to San Francisco. His career was interrupted by the Korean War, and Matthews became a paratrooper for the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division. In 1953, he returned to the 49ers for three more seasons.

Matthews grew eager to get on with a business career. He worked up the corporate ladder and eventually became president of Bell Howell, the camera and projector manufacturer.

His five children (besides Clay Jr. and Bruce, five years younger, the family included a daughter and twin boys) never knew their father as an N.F.L. player. But they knew him as someone who encouraged competition, and often got on the floor to teach wrestling moves or climbed on the diving board to teach dives.

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For Falcons, Only Thing Flashy Is Their Record

“I can’t turn on the TV without hearing we’re going to be the underdog,” Mughelli, the Atlanta Falcons fullback, said Wednesday. “A 13-3 underdog each week.”

In fact, the Falcons are favorites for their divisional playoff game at the Georgia Dome against , though the wee point spread suggests that the Packers, bottom-seeded in the N.F.C., would be the betting public’s preference over No. 1 Atlanta on neutral ground.

Mughelli proffered one oft-repeated reason in the locker room for any slight, then proposed a solution: “We don’t have a lot of flashy names. Maybe we need to start some scandals.”

With the Falcons, it does not get more outrageous than defensive end Kroy Biermann’s pending daddy-hood with his pregnant paramour Kim Zolniak, co-star of the other closely followed drama unfolding in town, “The Real Housewives of Atlanta.”

Well, wide receiver Roddy White, an ultralite version of Ocho/T.O., did casually invoke during trash talk with the . Since a consultation with Falcons Coach Mike Smith, White has confined cyberspace bashing to his state’s spotty road-clearing efforts of ice and snow this week. (“All this money I pay Georgia in taxes.”)

White, agreeing with Mughelli, said (not via his thumbs): “It’s kind of tough, week in and week out, we’re taking care of business, and people are picking other teams to win. I’m getting tired of it.”

Most of his teammates shrug off the notion that the Falcons’ support group nationwide might be less bandwagon than Volkswagen Bug.

“We are not one of the storied franchises,” observed tight end Tony Gonzalez, citing the Packers and the Bears.

“It’s more of the history to me. We’re not, like, America’s team. We’ve never won a , right?”

Correct. They have reached only one in 45 mostly inglorious seasons. Their trophy case, with four division titles, could fit in a broom closet.

By contemporary measures of individual player popularity, the Falcons are back in the pack. Gonzalez has 40,000 Twitter followers, the most on the squad, but that pales alongside the six-digit armies that track , Darrelle Revis and the king jesters, Chad Ochocinco and .

No Falcon has cracked the top 25 for player jerseys sold on .

“We do not have a lot of guys who are, ‘Hey, look at me; look what I do,’ ” offensive tackle Tyson Clabo said. “That stuff can get annoying at times.”

The roster may be sprinkled with stars, wide receiver Michael Jenkins said, “but nobody tries to outshine the other.”

Several players concurred that Smith’s unassuming manner radiates through the organization, which may draw admirers but not hordes of fans from beyond the state border.

“Teams tend to take from the aura of their coach,” said wide receiver Brian Finneran, an 11th-year Falcon, second in seniority on the squad. “He kind of has that laid-back surfer attitude.”

The team owner Arthur Blank detects another trait in his coach that ultimately deflects attention from the team.

“Some people say they are humble and are not really humble,” Blank said Wednesday. “Smitty really is a humble person.”

Blank brought on board the low profiles of Smith and General Manager Thomas Dimitroff before the 2008 season. Their roster reconstruction, guided in part by unloading and avoiding players perceived as selfish (and, thus, more attention-getting), has dovetailed with the Falcons’ first three-year stretch of winning records.

“A lot of teams have these big-name guys,” linebacker Curtis Lofton said. “We don’ t have that. We follow our coach. We’re not going to be big and flashy because that’s not our coach.”

Mughelli said: “Very few ‘me-me’ guys here. It’s more about the team. You won’t see them in the papers, wanting more passes” thrown their way.

Cornerback Dunta Robinson, offering a newcomer’s perspective, suspects that much of Nation would label the Falcons’ 13-3 record a fluke.

“We really don’t get much attention,” said Robinson, the big-ticket free-agent acquisition. “But we don’t care.”

By many numerical evaluations, the Falcons are run-of-the-mill. They rank 16th on offense (yards gained) and defense (yards allowed), and are below average on N.F.L. wonk statistics like net yards per pass attempt.

“We’re not No. 1 in anything,” acknowledged Blank, forgiving those computers and humans who forecast a quick out for the Falcons.

Finneran pointed out this: “The other teams, I guarantee you, they respect us.”

So do their peers, having voted seven Falcons into the Pro Bowl, a league high until New England passed them with two replacement picks.

One of Smith’s in-house mantras is that respect, like other rewards in the N.F.L., must be earned. For now, these Birds, as they are referred to locally, will continue to fly low and see where it takes them.

“We kind of like it, staying under the radar,” Jenkins said. “We win the Super Bowl, and there will be nobody else to talk about then.”

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