When then-Atlanta Falcons offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan addressed his team’s receivers before the 2015 season, he spoke of big plans.
Shanahan told the Falcons’ wideouts they were going to resemble the NBA’s Golden State Warriors. In the room, Atlanta great Roddy White was fine taking a back seat to star Julio Jones, who was anointed the team’s equivalent to Steph Curry. White would be Klay Thompson.
But it didn’t turn out that way, White said.
In Week 1, White received eight targets, which he turned into four catches for 84 yards. The next two weeks, he saw only one combined target and didn’t catch a pass. In Week 4, he made two receptions for eight yards on four targets.
Yet during his spell, White played no less than 68% of Atlanta’s snaps.
So what happened? White said he was effectively moved out of quarterback Matt Ryan’s progression pattern by Shanahan.
“I just see me going down in progression from two, to three, to four to like, out of the progression,” White said recently on "The Waterboyz" podcast. “I'm not even in the progression. And then we go into practice, and we'll practice one way. We'll get in the huddle, he'll call out a whole different formation and put me not in the progression.”
The situation prompted White to have several back-and-forth discussions with Atlanta’s coaches.
“I'm like, ‘Why am I playing all these plays to not get the ball in these precious situations where we throwing it to our younger receivers?’” White said. “I understand it's a growth thing, because I went through that stage, and Ju went through that stage too, of getting to the point when the game is on the line, or certain situations.
“We know Ju’s getting the ball, because you’ve been in that situation. You've made them plays before, you prove it right. We're not putting young dudes in that situation to try to figure out whether they could do it or not.“
White said he told then-Falcons head coach Dan Quinn that whatever Quinn was doing, Shanahan was doing it differently. It resulted in the two coaches butting heads, White said.
After his chat with Quinn, White talked with Shanahan, who White said “looked terrified” when White entered the office room. Shanahan knew of White’s reputation, he said, and didn’t want to get into an altercation.
So White, with the Falcons at 5-0, kept his message simple.
“I was like, ‘You know what? I'm going to keep letting you do it the way you want to do because they're going to catch up with you eventually,’” White said. “So then, we started losing games because we’re putting these dudes in situations they're not used to being in to win games.
“So now it's coming back down to life.”
Then, the Falcons lost seven of their next eight games, including six in a row. Questions arose as to why White didn't get more targets. White said the response often centered around the team's need to get Jones the ball -- but that wasn't the part that bothered him.
"I ain't got a problem with Ju getting the ball," White said. "I had a problem with you throwing the ball to anybody else on this team."
Why?
"Because I know what I'm capable of doing out there," White said. "You feel me?"
Still, White remains fond of the Falcons, who drafted him in the first round in 2005 and inducted him into their Ring of Honor in 2019. White viewed one of the Falcons' practices this summer, and he noted in the podcast appearance he felt bad for the team after blowing a 28-3 lead in the Super Bowl the year after he left
Even though his last year with the team didn't go as planned.
