Atlanta Falcons Tony Gonzalez going through ‘virtual training camp’

The Atlanta Falcons are handling Tony Gonzales with kids gloves and for good reason. Without much depth at tight end, Gonzalez, who somewhat struggled with the idea of retirement this past offseason will play a key role in the Falcons hopeful postseason run. The last thing they want to do is irritate Gonzalez, who was recently given ‘time off’ by the franchise to deal with family matters.

That hasn’t stopped the eventual Hall of Fame tight end from not participating in training camp though.

Despite not actually being at the field, Gonzalez, thanks to advances in technology is participating in ‘virtual’ training camp, this according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution:

"Through the joy of modern day technology, the Falcons have put tight end Tony Gonzalez through a virtual training camp.Falcons tight ends coach Chris Scelfo has been talking almost nightly to Gonzalez.“We’ve been in communications with him quite a bit with the technology that we have today, its state-of-the-art,” Scelfo said. “We’ll get him up to speed. We are using the iPad and we speak just about every night.”"

I’m going to take a stab in the dark and assume the ‘virtual’ training camp replies more on playbooks on the Ipad than it does Gonzalez wearing a head piece that links to bionic arms as he fights through tough tackles from virtual defenders.

That would have been pretty badass though.