Impressive Day - Falcons LT Jake Matthews Rushed Home From Carolina To Atlanta For The Birth Of His Son And Made It Back In Time To Start On TNF

[Source] - So began the adventure that was Matthews getting home in time to see Beckett Thomas Matthews be born around 3 p.m. It involved multiple decisions, a rental car speeding down Interstate 85 and a nervous soon-to-be dad trying to figure it all out.

Then he tried to decide if he would take a commercial flight (he didn't), charter a private plane (none were available on short notice) or drive. With no flight options, a member of the Falcons' security staff sped down the interstate starting at 9:30 a.m. with Matthews trying to lie down, hydrate and eat to keep a semblance of his pre-game football process.

Matthews then made his 137th start in a row for the Falcons at left tackle, once again playing every snap for Atlanta on the same day where he got to see his son enter the world as the latest part of a football family spanning three generations.

Big time football move here. Rush home, but make sure you keep your pregame routine as much as possible. Birth of the son? Please, that's simply a time concern more than anything else in this moment. Now, again, the Falcons lost 25-15 last night and the O-Line (much like the whole team) looked like hot trash. Maybe take a night off, even if you might win the NFC South at 7-11. It's in play! 

But I'm onto old Jake here. If you are a dad you know and can remember exactly what I'm about to describe. It's not the birth. It's not the having sex to have the kid part. Nope. It's after the kid is born and you're still stuck in that hospital room. My first son I was in the hospital for 5 days. Do you know how long that actually feels like when you just want to go home? Luckily one day my old man just looked at me and said come on, lunch, beers and football for a few hours. Game-changer, life-saver. Getting stuck in a hospital room is the worst. 

So with that in mind, I'm starting to understand why Jake rushed back out of there. You gotta be able to breathe and I don't care how rich you are, all hospital rooms are trash. 

Incredible tweet by his wife though. Football gal if I've ever seen one. Goes through hell - and yes, if you have never been in the room for a woman giving birth, it's just not fun. I'm not even trying to oversell it. It looks like the worst thing in the world. Chalk up a win for us for never having to do that. 

I gotta say though one of the weirdest parts of this all isn't the travel or playing it's the fact he got woken up by the hotel phone. I would have a panic attack if I'm getting calls on my hotel phone to wake me up. It's like having a house phone and I haven't had one of those since 2007? Somewhere around there. I don't blame Matthews for sleeping with his cell phone on silent, it's the smart thing to do. But waking up by a hotel phone? No thank you.