Although Za’Darius Smith returned to the lineup for Atlanta on Sunday, several more defenders were injured during the course of the game.<\/p>\n
The most notable injury involved rookie linebacker Kendal Daniels, who was carted off the field during the third quarter after tackling Bears tight end Colston Loveland. After the game, head coach Kevin Stefanski said the initial reports on Daniels were positive.<\/p>\n
“He did have movement in his extremities out there on the field,” he said. “I thought the medical staff did an outstanding job of getting him safely off the field. All reports so far have been good, and we’ll continue to pray that they remain good.”<\/p>\n
In the locker room, multiple players shared their thoughts and well wishes for Daniels.<\/p>\n
RB Bijan Robinson:\u00a0“I was just praying, just asking, God, ‘Please protect him, please cover him.’ Because that’s a scary moment. Not just for our team, but for the other team too. That’s a player in this league that we all respect. And when you see him going down like that and having a bad injury like that, that you just don’t know of, all you can do is rely on your faith and allow God to pick him up and protect him.”<\/p>\n
DE Cam Thomas:\u00a0“That’s tough, you know? I was on the sideline. He made a good play, too. He made a good hit, and I started celebrating, and then when I saw he didn’t get up, I just had that gut feeling. Nobody wants to [see that]. It’s a tough feeling. [I’ll] check in on him here a little bit and make sure he’s doing all right, but it’s tough.”<\/p>\n
DE Samson Ebukam:\u00a0“I didn’t exactly see what happened, but I’m glad that he was moving at the end of it. I’m glad that he was moving at the end of it. I know that God’s with him, so I think he’ll be just fine. It’s unfortunate. Yeah, we’re here with him. We’re here with him. We’re gonna be praying for him.”<\/p>\n
DT Gervon Dexter Sr.:\u00a0“It sucks, definitely a guy like him, who obviously just worked back from the injury. Then the type of player he is, and what he brings to the team. You know, he’s a young guy; he brings that energy. So, it’s unfortunate. I’m praying for him, and hopefully everything’s okay.”<\/p>\n
LB Harold Perkins Jr.:\u00a0“I was just hoping and praying that he’d get up and he was all right. I was worried about his safety, more so than football.”<\/p>\n
DE Zach Harrison: “I’m just praying for him. Really, all you can do is pray for him. He’s like a little brother to us, all of us in the locker room. [He] brings great energy. He’s a great player, too, seeing him develop and grow from camp to where he is now. And I guess all I can do is just pray that it’s nothing serious. They did all the precautionary stuff to just be safe. But hopefully he’s back in the building tomorrow, himself, laughing and joking.”<\/p>\n
QB Michael Penix Jr.:\u00a0“Everybody went out on the field. Just told him that we’re there for him and just prayed for him. That’s all we could do at that moment. We don’t know what’s going on with him. We saw he was moving, so that was obviously a positive, and that was something that gave us hope. But all you can do is pray for him in that moment and just be there for him as a teammate.<\/p>\n
“He was like, ‘Y’all go finish this off.’ That’s what he said when he was getting carted off. He said, ‘Y’all go finish this off,’ so he was in good spirits.”<\/p>\n
Daniels returned to the locker room after the game concluded and most of his teammates had already left. He was accompanied by trainers but was walking on his own.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Although Za’Darius Smith returned to the lineup for Atlanta on Sunday, several more defenders were injured during the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1031823,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2074],"tags":[223,254,2554,4127,133741,131786,224,7,21658,102862,8591,6153,1879,88,6,350],"class_list":["post-1031822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-atlanta-falcons","tag-atlanta","tag-atlanta-falcons","tag-atlantafalcons","tag-bijan-robinson","tag-chicago-bears-at-atlanta-falcons-2026-reg-6","tag-early-bird-report","tag-falcons","tag-football","tag-gervon-dexter-sr","tag-kendal-daniels","tag-kevin-stefanski","tag-kyle-pitts","tag-michael-penix-jr","tag-news","tag-nfl","tag-will-mcfadden"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/117468188053093813","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1031822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1031822"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1031822\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1031823"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1031822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1031822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1031822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}