Julio Jones Plans to Miss Mandatory Minicamp amid Contract Rumors
Today Thomas Dimitroff announced that Julio Jones would not be attending mini camp.
The Julio Jones saga continues. A few weeks ago Julio Jones did not attend OTA‘s and it was reported by Adam Schefter that Julio wanted an update to his contract. Julio (we thought) put those rumors to rest saying he would be an Atlanta Falcon for life. Now the saga continues as Julio has announced today in the form of a statement for the Falcons that he will not be attending mandatory minicamp. Oh boy!
It might not seem like a big deal that Julio isn’t there as he’s a veteran and should have the playing experience to be able to miss a week but there are some concerns with the money aspect. In the coming years, the Falcons have to renew contracts with several key players and if Julio is looking for a new contract that could mean Grady Jarrett, Deion Jones, Keanu Neal, or Jake Matthews will leave in the next few years.
A lot of people have brought up the concern of Julio missing reps and being off his game with Matt Ryan but that’s not a huge concern to me. Matt Ryan has said in his press conferences in the past few weeks that he’s worked with Julio on their timing so him missing reps doesn’t concern me that much.
The big concern with this is that if Julio is indeed looking for an update to his contract he could end up hurting the team in the long run and maybe cost us a trip to the Super Bowl. This is all rash thinking as of right now because we haven’t from Julio about what kind of updates he wants but it is safe to assume that this COULD hurt the franchise.
Also, we’re talking about minicamp. Minicamp. This is not practice. Minicamp is OTAs with a different name and when Julio balls out during the season, everyone who wants to trade or cut him better not be cheering for him.