FLOWERY BRANCH, Ga. – Falcons Head Coach Mike Smith said on Monday that defensive tackle Peria Jerry, the team’s first-round pick in 2009 who had started each of the team’s first two games, suffered a season-ending knee injury on Sunday against Carolina and will be placed on injured reserve.
To fill Jerry’s spot, the Falcons signed defensive tackle Vance Walker, a 2009 seventh-round pick out of Georgia Tech, from the practice squad.
In his two games, Jerry finished with one tackle and one quarterback pressure, both of which came in Week 1 against Miami. Jerry left the game with 9:15 remaining in the fourth quarter of Sunday’s 28-20 win over Carolina. He had to be helped off the field by two members of the Falcons’ staff and placed no weight upon his left knee. The Falcons confirmed that it was the left knee that will keep Jerry out.
Smith did not reveal any specifics about which ligaments were injured or to what degree, saying only that the injury was “season-ending.” Smith said that he spoke to Jerry both on Sunday night and on Monday morning.
“It’s misfortune for Peria, but it is a very, very violent game in the in-line of the offensive and defensive lines,” Smith said. “We’re going to miss him but we’ve got to move forward."
“I thought Peria had earned the starting defensive tackle alongside Jonathan Babineaux. Again…as I’ve said very many times before, we feel we’ve got seven defensive starters. He was a guy who was getting just as many snaps as any of the others.”
Moving forward immediately means that Thomas Johnson will take over Jerry’s spot, Smith said. Johnson, 6-foot-2, 304 pounds, played two games for Dallas in his rookie year of 2005 and then 11, including three as a starter, for Houston in 2006.
Until this season, he had not played in a regular season game since then, as he had been cut by the Texans after their 2007 training camp and the New York Jets after their 2008 camp.
During those seasons out of football, Johnson worked out in case a call came and even spent four months teaching ninth-grade physical education in his native Memphis.
He called the opportunity to return to the NFL “a blessing.”
During training camp, he impressed early in the first preseason game with a sack inside the 10-yard-line that forced Detroit into a field goal. He had one assist on Sunday against Carolina and one solo tackle against Miami in the opener.
“At that position, everyone’s always looking for defensive linemen,” General Manager Thomas Dimitroff told AtlantaFalcons.com about Johnson in August. “We always are. And I think in this situation our personnel staff [was] being diligent about scanning the names and us getting him in there having the idea that he would fit into our scheme. Most important is the fact that he rose to the occasion and showed that he had something to prove.”
Dimitroff said Johnson’s strengths are “a nice combination of quickness and explosion with the ability to show a real strong lateral leverage.”
Johnson, who weighs about 10 pounds more than Jerry, said Jerry’s pass rush from the interior line will be missed.
“It’s a blow ‘cause Peria brings something different than I bring to the team,” he said. “He brings quickness and pass rush ability and speed. I’m more of a kind of power guy. It’s going to hurt us but we have other guys who can fill in and take over.”
Trey Lewis, who was inactive in each of the first two games, also will likely get some playing time, Smith said. The 6-3, 316-pound Lewis, a sixth-round draft pick in 2007, has not played since Nov. 18, 2007, when he injured his knee against Tampa Bay.
He re-injured it in the 2008 offseason, forcing him to miss all of last season. Like Johnson, with whom Lewis often played in a tandem during the preseason, Lewis brings size but not necessarily the same quickness or pass rush.
To get that inside pass rush, the Falcons may play defensive end Chauncey Davis more at tackle. Davis, 262 pounds, plays both end and tackle and in obvious passing situations he has played tackle in a group with Kroy Biermann and John Abraham at the ends and Babineaux as the other tackle.
Davis said he had not yet spoken to coaches if he will play more inside.
“We just have to deal with it and keep moving on and other guys are going to have to step up to take part in our defense,” he said.
In the Falcons’ first two games, the defensive line has been one of the defense’s strengths, as it recorded four sacks in Week 1. Now its depth will be tested and if Walker is to contribute, he’ll have to learn the ropes quickly.
“Vance, I think he brings a lot of power, strength and size on the d-line,” Johnson said. “I know he’s excited, I just got done talking to him. I’m excited for him.”
