Everyone Pleased With First Practice for Roddy White

FLOWERY BRANCH, Ga. -- Roddy White and his agent have been quiet during the first nine days of training camp, preferring not to comment publicly on negotiations. The holdout is over and on White's first day in camp, he's making noise.

"We'll have a lot of big, explosive plays this year out of our offense," White said after his first practice with the team.

As you can tell, White is excited to be back in camp, back with the team and back in the huddle. Head coach Mike Smith is just happy to have him back.

"As a team, you want to have all of your best players," Smith said. "When you don't have your best players, you are not going to be as efficient as you possibly can. That's the big thing, we probably weren't efficient in week one as we could have been."

White started morning workouts working with the second team, but it didn't take him long to work his way back to where everyone expects; catching balls from Matt Ryan with the starting offense. About mid-way through practice, when the team started its first 11-on-11 drill, White moved in with the starters. And he saw a lot of balls come his way.

"I came out here and dropped a couple of balls today. Just have to knock the rust off."

But White didn't drop everything. In fact he was targeted two out of three times in seven on seven drills from Ryan, catching them both. Ryan led a great drive and capped it off with a 20-yard touchdown pass to tight-end Tony Gonzalez. It was hard to tell if the comment came from a player returning to mid-field or a fan behind them, but after the drive and subsequent touchdown, someone yelled "Get used to it." It didn't matter who made the statement, it rings true about how this Falcons offense plans to move the ball down field; lots of passes to White and Gonzalez.

Marty Booker was also a new face in camp Monday, making his first practice after signing with the Falcons on Thursday.

"I'm just trying to get in and play catch-up," Booker said as he was coached through his routes on the field as he went through drills this morning.

But that's not all he said. When asked his impressions on Matt Ryan he praised the second year quarterback. "It's good to finally play with a pretty good quarterback," Booker said. "If you look at my career and my stats, the 11 years that I've been in the NFL, I think I've had like 20 different starting quarterbacks."

Erik Coleman is making the move to strong safety.

Coleman, the Falcons' top returning tackler, has been moved over to Lawyer Milloy's old strong safety spot on the defensive unit.

With Coleman moving over to strong safety, Thomas DeCoud, the second-year safety out of California, looks to move over to free safety.

With the addition of Booker and Robert Ferguson to the roster and White ending his holdout, the receiving corps now has three new veterans in camp. White and Michael Jenkins will be the top two guys, but who will play in the slot with the first team remains a mystery.

Brian Finneran saw a great deal of action in the teams' 11-on-11 two-minute drill. He caught three passes in a row from Matt Ryan before Ryan hit Gonzalez in the end zone. Eric Weems and Troy Bergeron also made the most of being targeted in drills.

Chandler Williams, on the other hand, had a rough morning practice. He was chastised for lining up incorrectly, then proceeded to drop three balls in the next two drills. He did come on strong towards the end of morning practice.

It's easy to see that the pressure is mounting up as a lot of young receivers work hard to make the 53-man roster.

D.J. Shockley, speaking of moving the team down the field, is having a great camp thus far. He's frequently made great passes and is working well outside of the pocket as well as in.

He's also been working mostly with the second team offense. It wouldn't surprise me a bit to see Shockley's name in front of Chris Redman's if the Falcons were to issue a depth chart right now. The official depth chart isn't coming any time soon, but know that Shockley has out-played every quarterback in camp not named Matt Ryan.