Dante Fowler Jr. eager to show off new attitude
Associated Press
FLOWERY BRANCH, Ga. — Dante Fowler Jr. hustled through an agility drill Wednesday, then took off toward the other end of the practice field, leading the way with a couple of Atlanta Falcons teammates.
He’s also taken his career in a different direction.
Once pegged as a troublemaker who seemed likely to be a first-round bust, Fowler is coming off his best season with the Los Angeles Rams.
Now, he’s joined a Falcons team that is desperate for an elite pass rusher.
Fowler is embracing the expectations.
“My first few years in a league, I had some bumps, some growing pains,” he conceded. “There was a learning curve that will sharpen the best of us. I’m just happy it happened early in my career
Gurley, Mack sit out first practice in full pads — see page B2
and not in my later years. There’s people out here who have a lot of great success in the beginning, but they don’t know how to handle it. I’m happy it happened to me early. Now, I’m ready to be a pro for the next 10 years.”
Fowler was the third overall pick in the 2015 draft by the Jacksonville Jaguars, who were enamored with his enormous physical skills and overlooked some major red flags in his personal life.
Maybe things would’ve been different if he had not torn a knee ligament in his very first minicamp, knocking him out for an entire season.
FALCONS,
When play finally resumed at the MLS Is Back tournament in central Florida, Atlanta United no longer resembled one of the league’s dominant teams. Instead, coach Frank de Boer sent out a squad that was all out of sync and unable to generate the sort of exciting, attacking style that was the hallmark under previous coach Tata Martino.
Three games. Three straight 1-0 defeats. “We weren’t playing as a group,” goalkeeper Brad Guzan said. “That was obvious to everyone who was watching.”
De Boer got the boot not long after the team got back to Atlanta. Though it was described as a mutual decision, all of the players know this was a firing.
“When you have the results we had, and knowing the standard that Atlanta United has set for ourselves as a club, something had to change,” Guzan said.
Enter Stephen Glass, a 44-year-old Scots
man who is running the club on an interim basis while it searches for a full-time replacement.
Glass is pushing the team to get back to the way it played under Martino.
“We have an abundance of talent to score goals,” he said Thursday. “We’re trying to make them more forward-thinking, where our first thought is, ‘Can we go score? Can we beat the other team?’ I think we have better players than a lot of other teams. We’ve got to use them.”
Taking over a team that won the 2018 MLS
Cup title, de Boer struggled to convey his vision of a possession-oriented style. He came across as aloof and unwilling to change, never really gaining the acceptance of his players.
Even so, de Boer’s initial season could hardly be called a failure, with victories in the U.S. Open Cup and Campeones Cup before a run to the conference final in the MLS playoffs.
But de Boer’s shortcomings, combined with several front-office moves that have not gone according to plan, have hit the club hard in 2020.