Vellano goes for 2nd Super Bowl ring
FLOWERY BRANCH — His timing is impeccable.
A l ot of g uys s l og through an entire career without coming close to a Super Bowl ring.
Joe Vellano is going for a matching set.
And who is Joe Vellano?
Maybe one of the most fortunate players in the NFL.
A 300-pound defensive lineman, Vellano wasn’t drafted out of college and he’s spent much of his pro career either as a backup or the totally thankless role of practice- squad player.
But there he was, in just his second season, popping up l i ke Forrest Gump on a championship- winning team at New England.
Even got a ring to prove it.
Now, after bouncing around the last couple of years and barely playing at all, Vellano is heading to the Super Bowl again, this time with the Atlanta Falcons.
To face the Patriots, no less.
“There’s a lot that goes into getting to this point in the season,” Vellano said Wednesday before heading out to the practice field as a full-fledged member of the Falcons, a promotion he earned just over a week ago.
“But it’s more about the group that you’re with, the sacrifices they’ve put out all year and the effort, the work that this whole organization has really done. So we’re ready to go and we’re going to be really excited.”
Unlike his first trip to the big game, chances are he’ll be in uniform for this one, having been bumped up to the active roster just before the NFC championship game.
“I remember having a conversation with him about six weeks ago, ‘Joe, I don’t know if your time is going to come this year, but I do know that you’re ready. Keep putting the work in because when the time does come, you want to stay ready,’” Falcons coach Dan Quinn said.
The 28-year-old Vellano knows how blessed he is to have an opportunity at a pair of championships when so many players — many of them much more accomplished than he is — never even got their first.
But it’s not as if this has been a smooth ride. Not by a long shot. Following a stellar career at Maryland, Vellano’s name was never called in the 2013 draft, though his disappointment was softened a bit when he hooked on with the Patriots. Not a bad landing spot. Things were really looking up when he unexpectedly got a chance to start eight games as a rookie, stepping up after Vince Wilfork went down with a season- ending Achilles injury.