Jared Bernhardt. Olamide Zaccheaus. Geraldo Boldewjin. Bernard Reedy. You hear the names, and depending on how long you’ve been a close observer of Falcons training camp, you’ll instantly recognize them as players who turned heads in summers of yesteryear. Often they’re wide receivers who come into camp with low expectations and dazzle in practices and games, and (very) occasionally they even land a major role with the team into the fall. If nothing else, they dazzle us briefly and make the summer more fun that it would have been otherwise.
In seasons past, as the roster thinned out and the team had to dig deeper to find contributors, players like Timothy Horne and Dorian Etheridge were able to turn strong summers into roster stints, with Horne proving to be a critical piece of the defensive line rotation late in the year in 2022.