RENTON, Wash. (AP) – Lawyer Milloy isn’t bitter about his time in Atlanta coming to an end.
The Falcons had a new coach, a rookie quarterback and were looking to get younger, and Milloy was 35 and coming off a subpar year with an expiring contract. Yet the four-time Pro Bowler gave everything he had in 2008, even playing with a broken back in the playoffs.
“Transverse fracture I found out afterward,” Milloy said of the injury. “Before the season I knew they wanted to try to get younger. Period, point blank, I gave that city my all. There’s nothing that nobody can say about that.”
Milloy helped turn around a team that finished 4-12 in 2007, while dealing with Michael Vick’s dogfighting allegations and Bobby Petrino’s resignation as head coach. The Falcons went a surprising 11-5 the following year and made the playoffs, and Milloy was a part of it.
“He was one of those mentors in our first year and really was a big contributor in terms of spreading the message,” Falcons coach Mike Smith said. “I believe that you’ve got to have players that can be the messengers for your coaching staff. You can’t always be hearing it from the coaches. He did a great job with that.”
Milloy’s contract was up and the Falcons didn’t bring him back, and the safety was left without a job until the first week of the 2009 season, when he was signed by the hometown Seahawks. He played in a reserve role for most of last season, and when Pete Carroll – Milloy’s former coach in New England – signed on to lead the Seahawks, a re-energized Milloy signed on for another season and earned a starting job.
“He has a tremendous mindset and mentality about competing and battling and fighting and work ethic and all of the things that go along,” Carroll said. “He needs everything – he’s such a rare guy – he needs all of those things to come together to play this long.
“He wants to practice. He wants to play. He doesn’t want to come out,” Carroll added. “He contributed on special teams when we called on him to. He’s an amazing, amazing guy.”
Milloy will see his former club come to town this weekend, facing a Seahawks team that’s lost five of its last seven games and been outscored 190-74 in those losses. The Falcons have the best record in the NFC and have won seven straight games.
Despite being 6-7, Seattle is still in the thick of the playoff race in the NFC West, while Atlanta can get one step closer to locking up homefield advantage.
“Former team or not, this is one of the best teams in the NFL right now,” Milloy said.
“Given the situation we’re in it’s like a playoff game. A lot of implications for both teams. In the position that they’re in, they have a chance to really solidify homefield advantage for the playoffs,” he added. “We’re trying to figure it out to get in. We’re in the same conference, potentially this is a tone setter game for later on too.”
Add A Comment