The Atlanta Falcons will face the San Francisco 49ers this week in a massive game where they will try to be the first loss for a team who may just be the very best in all of football right now.

Whether or not Atlanta is at full strength remains to be seen, but in last week's loss to the Chicago Bears, it looked like something very serious had gone down involving rookie linebacker Kendal Daniels. Having to be immobilized and stretchered off following a routine tackle, Daniels was seen after the game walking into the locker room.

To the surprise of many, he has actually been practicing in full this week and while his status for Sunday is to be determined still, he did get the chance to speak to media for the first time and break down what happened in the incident and how things went down.

"Yeah, it was a scary play. I’m blessed to come out how I did, and it was a bad play, but I’m happy I’m here," Daniels said. "The screen came down. It was the top of my head. It was a pain in my neck, and I just took a knee...I tried to get up, but my neck was hurting, so I just went back down and decided to wait till the trainers got over there....I just got to get my head across. Can’t hit with the top of my head."

Daniels clarified he is going to be taking the advice of the training staff when it comes to whether or not he is going to play, but it does seem like he avoided anything serious and will use this as a learning experience moving forward to try to prevent it from happening again.

Nobody wants to see a player go down with any injury, and this Daniels situation felt different than any ailment the Mercedes-Benz Stadium crowd had ever seen. Fortunately, he seems to be okay, and critically is going to try to take steps to avoid that kind of contact in the future.

Daniels has been a major bright spot for the team so far this year, looking like a mid round steal and potential future franchise cornerstone on the defensive side of this ball. If Atlanta is going to accomplish what it hopes to over the next couple of years under Kevin Stefanski, it's already clear that Daniels is going to be a huge part of the plan.

If he can indeed continue to prove he is fully recovered, perhaps he actually could be on the field this weekend against San Francisco and get his impressive rookie campaign right back on track with another strong performance.