Roddy White

On Monday, coach Mike Smith said Falcons WR Julio Jones was “darn close” to playing against Pittsburgh and that he thinks Jones will be ready to go against New Orleans.

“Julio is about where he was yesterday. Our anticipation is we’ll have him ready to go this week,” Smith said, via the team’s website. “It’s going to be important for him to continue to improve. He improved from last week to this week, and we need to get him back out there. I know it’ll be every day, what’s going on with Julio. I think what we need to do, is we need to realize it’s something that’s going to be later on during the week, so maybe we can look at other things and talk about other before we talk about number 11.”

PFT went on to say Smith was full of optimism for Jones last week and Roddy White the previous week before both players wound up on the sideline come kickoff. That doesn’t mean he’s off on this call, but there’s probably not much reason to jump to the conclusion that Jones is playing until he’s able to at least get back on the practice field.