The Falcoholic
When Darnell Mooney was injured way back in late July, the best estimate we got from the team was that he would miss a “few weeks” of action with a shoulder injury. There were rumors swirling around at the time that the injury might be more severe than the Falcons were indicating, but without the team or reporters in the building giving us anything concrete, we just waited and hoped for the best.
Mooney would miss Week 1, but he was out there in Week 2. The puzzling thing for anyone who saw Mooney do stellar work all last season was that he didn’t look very much like Mooney, something we chalked up to rust and recovery at the time. Mooney would go on to miss another week with a hamstring injury, and thus far his season has been a massive disappointment compared to our high expectations, with the veteran receiver and Michael Penix Jr. seemingly not on the same page through0ut the year and with Mooney dropping passes he would’ve caught in his sleep a year ago. Surely a shoulder ailment and a mild hamstring ailment shouldn’t be impacting him to this extent?
On Dukes and Bell on 92.9 The Game Wednesday, Raheem Morris parried and riposted with Mike Bell and Carl Dukes over the state of the team, mostly stressing the need to keep working and stay even in the face of the team’s four game losing streak. The only time I heard Morris get more than a little testy concerned Mooney, with Dukes pressing him about the connection between the two, when Morris revealed for what I believe is the first time publicly that Darnell Mooney had a broken collarbone in July. You can hear the exchange starting at 15:56, but here’s an excerpt.
Carl Dukes: “Coach, I have to ask you right there. High expectations. Darnell had a great year last year.”
Raheem Morris: “No doubt.”
Mike Bell: “He had a shot at 1,000 yards.”
Carl Dukes: “We know he missed camp.”
Raheem Morris: “Yeah.”
Carl Dukes: “We’ve been talking about this, and I know that played a role. But coach, it seems like there’s no connection between our quarterback and Darnell Mooney right now.”
Raheem Morris: “How would you have one?”
Carl Dukes: “I don’t know. I’m assuming the practices, I don’t know!”
Raheem Morris: “There’s been no practices. You just said it.”
Carl Dukes: “For both of those guys.”
Raheem Morris: “You just said it. So like, you don’t make excuses, you never talk about these things, but like…Mooney, we knew how this would work, right? He came back, he hurt his…he broke his collar bone the first play of training camp.”
Carl Dukes: “Right.”
Raheem Morris: “First play of training camp, he missed all this time, he came back the second week of the season. That was the first time they actually practiced together. You start working those practices, you knew the first four weeks of the season would be like almost...
