FLOWERY BRANCH, Ga. — Typically failing to give the opponents any so-called bulletin-board material, members of the Atlanta Falcons' offensive line mostly reacted with bemusement to the suggestion of New York Giants defensive lineman Justin Tuck that they are “dirtbags.”
Asked about Tuck’s comments, right tackle Tyson Clabo, a Pro Bowl pick in 2010, said that Tuck, “didn’t mean it. He’s a nice guy. He didn’t mean it. He was just — he had heard that; he didn’t say it, right? I say things I heard about all the time that I don’t mean.”
Clabo said Tuck was nice to him when he was briefly on the Giants’ practice squad back in 2004. The teams last played each other in 2009, a 34-31 Giants’ win in overtime.
While Clabo said Tuck was nice, his words weren’t exactly.
“Most people, you would call them dirtbags,” Tuck said of the Falcons’ line. “But it is what it is. We got to make sure we do our job, and if we are doing our job well then they will be upset and they will be trying to do things to get us off our game, and we got to take that as a compliment.
“But in the same sense, you got to protect yourself and, hopefully, the referees have 20-20 vision this week.”
Falcons offensive line coach Paul Boudreau preaches to his squad the idea of playing to the “echo of the whistle.” He wants to take hits off running back Michael Turner by having his linemen downfield to prevent defenders from piling on.
Nonetheless, Tuck is not the first defensive player to make such a claim. Detroit defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh — a player who has been accused of and suspended for dirty play himself — said after the Falcons’ 23-16 win over Detroit on Oct. 23 that the Falcons' offensive line plays dirty.
“There are many, many, many plays that I could go back to that I watch on film all week that their offensive line has done,” Suh told Detroit reporters the day after that game. “And that they’ve been coached to do, as far as I know. It’s not anything that's not been said; it's not anything that’s new.”
Former Falcons right guard Harvey Dahl, now with St. Louis but who was a starter on head coach Mike Smith’s first three teams in Atlanta, was written about in one piece as the league’s dirtiest player.
But Falcons players mostly tried to ignore the comment. Left tackle Will Svitek noted that Tuck might have been engaging in some gamesmanship to try to plant ideas with the officials.
“We do what we do, and we’re going to play, like I said, to the very end, to the whistle,” Svitek said. “We won’t do anything after the whistle. We’re going to play physical. You know, it might draw attention to it, but we do what we do, we’re going to play our style.”
Even wide receiver Roddy White, among the most quotable of Falcons’ players, would not touch the subject when it was insinuated that maybe Tuck also was talking about him.
“No, no, no, I’m out there on the perimeter,” White said. “Those guys in the trenches they do — I’m not even going to be out there blocking Justin Tuck, so I don’t have nothing to say to him.”
For his part, Giants coach Tom Coughlin, in a conference call with Atlanta media on Wednesday, did his best to quash any potential controversy. He was asked if he saw anything on film to suggest dirty play by the Falcons.
“I don’t have any thoughts about that,” he said. “There’s some chippiness, but that pretty much takes place in all games, so I have no reason to make that statement.”
Regardless, Clabo had to spend plenty of time on Wednesday addressing the subject.
“I think you guys are blowing this up,” Clabo said. “Maybe you should go back and ask him if he really meant it because I don’t think he did.”
