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By Cameron Kiszla
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The Atlanta Falcons are riding high after a 35-14 dismantling of the Green Bay Packers on "Thursday Night Football," but that excitement may have gotten to their star's head.
Running back Bijan Robinson, who ripped off more than 200 yards of total offense and a pair of touchdowns in his team's first win of the season, credited the victory to his coach, Kevin Stefanski.
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Robinson said after last week's 34-3 drubbing at the hands of the Carolina Panthers, Stefanski gave a speech so good that the running back felt compelled to compare his coach to one of the greatest public speakers of all time.
“I think last week was a bigger testament to who he is just as a person, but as a coach,” Robinson said on set. “You know, obviously we lost how we did last week, and he went right to the locker room, and I don’t know if he drank some coffee or something, but he said this speech. It was like Martin Luther King was in there, man.”
Analyst Richard Sherman tried to push back with a "wait a minute," reports Qwame Skinner of Awful Announcing, but Robinson just kept on going.
“He just brought everybody, all the players together,” Robinson continued, “and he was saying like, ‘Are we gonna let this loss define us? Is this who we’re gonna be as a team, or are we gonna just change it right now and, you know, try to flip the switch.'”
It seemed the Falcons indeed flipped the switch, thanks in no small part to the return of quarterback Michael Penix from injury.
But to compare a head coach's speech about football to perhaps the most influential public speaker in American history is quite the stretch.
King was fighting for Civil Rights, a matter of much more importance than football, and given his deep ties to the Atlanta area, some may take offense at Robinson's simile.
That said, the speech certainly seemed to play a key role in the Falcons turnaround, and Robinson definitely made that point clear, even if the head-to-head comparison between King and Stefanski might be a little off base.
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