Falcons’ ping pong competitions in the locker room helped make them contenders

What do the Atlanta Falcons do when they’re not on the practice field? Considering the team’s success this season, you may think players spend all of their free time studying the game plan or analyzing opponents on tape. Sure, that’s a part of the team’s weekly preparation, but so is ping pong.

During the offseason, the Falcons rearranged the locker room. In previous seasons, there was a row of lockers bisecting the room, separating the lockers on the perimeter from the ones across the room.

Lockers were mostly arranged by position group. It was segmented and separate, and head coach Dan Quinn thought the team needed a new environment to foster the “brotherhood” he hoped to build.

“So we (were) not as connected as we could be, so it was just one more avenue for our team to see how close we could get,” Quinn said.

The row of lockers down the center was removed, leaving just the lockers around the perimeter. Players were shuffled around, putting Matt Ryan next to his new center, Alex Mack. Kicker Matt Bryant is next to wide receiver Taylor Gabriel, and Julio Jones, who used to be next to Matt Ryan, has a new neighbor this season, too.

The rearranged locker room has fostered interaction between players who aren’t in position group meetings or film study sessions together, and has encouraged the team to become closer.

And down the middle of the locker room, where those lockers once stood, now stand three ping pong tables. During open locker room, when the media is allowed in to speak with players, those tables are always occupied.

“Not only do they want to spend time together out of the building, but in the building too,” Quinn said. “Having that competition in something as small as ping pong, just to go battle for it. We’ve got three minutes until the next meeting, we’re going to play a game for three.”

It may not surprise you that the best player in the room is Julio Jones. His athleticism translates well to ping pong, and you can see the speed and fluidity from the field echoed on the tables.

But what may surprise you is how many of Jones’ teammates believe they’re on his level. It doesn’t matter if the player in question is a tight end who spent much of the season on the practice squad, namely D.J. Tialavea.

“And put this on record. D.J. Tialavea is the best ping pong player in this locker room,” Tialavea told SB Nation in the week leading up to the Falcons’ divisional win over the Seattle Seahawks. “You’ve got to go ask around. My ping pong game is on another level right now.”

Rookie nickel cornerback Brian Poole ranked himself as the top three ping pong players in the locker room.

“Poole, Poole and Poole,” Poole said. “The top three spots. I’m taking them.”

Matt Ryan has even gotten into the action, and he’s a no-holds-barred kind of competitor.

Right tackle Ryan Schraeder thinks the NFL MVP may be the team’s MVP in ping pong, also.

“I played against him, and I only scored like two points, and he just disgraced me,” Schraeder said. “So I’m sure he felt good about that. I thought I was good up until that point. Obviously not. I’ve played Julio, (fullback) Patrick (DiMarco), and they’re pretty good, and I’ve kept up with them.”

Ping pong in the locker room does foster Quinn’s ideal of “brotherhood,” and it has been a catalyst for the Falcons’ competitive spirit this season. It also exemplifies the egalitarian attitude of these Atlanta players.

Long snapper Josh Harris isn’t the most well-known Falcons player, by a long shot. No long snapper is. Though his role is highly specialized and fundamentally important to the special teams unit, and he’s quite good at it, Harris is often overlooked.

But not by his teammates, not when he’s at the ping pong table. Harris is a consensus top-five player in that context, and he holds his own with the team’s top player.

“Julio and I have gone back and forth. The series is tied one to one,” Harris said.

In the week leading up to the Super Bowl, the Falcons have landed in the midst of a circus. From the theatrics and crazy questions of Super Bowl Opening Night, to a seemingly endless stream of media obligations, it’s markedly more difficult for the team to keep that singular focus on Sunday’s game.

Still, the Falcons are trying to maintain as much normalcy as possible, and that means they’re still playing ping pong.

“We enjoy spending time with each other, going through the game plan, that kind of stuff, and then just relaxing,” Ryan said of the team’s preparation for Super Bowl LI. “We’ve got a pretty good setup with our game room and stuff like that. There’s some ping pong going on, which you guys who have been in the locker room know that’s a big thing for us at Flowery Branch. And so it’s been a lot of fun.”

When the Falcons face off against the New England Patriots on Super Bowl Sunday, it will be the culmination of months of hard work, planning and preparation. To suggest that ping pong helped get the team to where it is today, its first Super Bowl berth since the 1998 season, may seem like an effort to oversimplify the situation.

But ping pong had a role in building the bond between these players and instilling an unshakeable sense of competition in a team that previously lacked it. Ping pong did help shape the 2016 Falcons into the Super Bowl contenders they became.