Falcons stomp Saints behind dominant run game, 45-24

Welcome to the athletic football show brought to you by the US bank smartly visas signature card. I'm Robert Mays. Big win for the Atlanta Falcons on Monday night football. Huge night for B. John Robinson that tire run game a tough night for these Saints were on defense and their ability to run the ball on offense. Just a convincing win for the Falcons for the second straight week in prime time. So much stuff to dig into with that performance and some of the stuff that stuck out from it. We did it all with me Derek and Dave. Let's get to that conversation right now. [Music] We like to complicate we like to complicate it on this show because it's fun right we we appreciate the complexities of footballs of sport because there's always a lot going on it's fun to dive into it. But at its core this game can be very simple. If you can't run the ball and you can't stop the run you're gonna get your ass kicked and that is precisely what happened tonight in the game between the Atlanta Falcons and the New Orleans Saints. That's what's happened to the Saints for a lot of this season and this was about as bad as it's looked the way that I mean it it was what the first or second play of the game. B. John Robinson does the thing again where he just makes third play the game okay. Saints a little bit of credit. I'll give him credit for having two decent plays of defense and then yeah third play of the game he makes a cut behind the line that it only feels like he can always see and make an interest. It's one of those things where like sometimes the whole looks so wide open on some of his runs but him even getting to the whole at all is kind of the magic in the way that he can cut and see things behind the line of scrimmage and then obviously takes off and then it felt like they did that 10 more times for the rest of this game. The Saints run defense was good last year it was it was it was good last year it was like the strength it went when you're trying to build the case for why the Saints defense was it was in the back half of last season when they were like a borderline top seven unit it's because the run defense was very good and I know they're a little bit banged up right now right Carl Granderson's hurt Kate Nellis's hurt everybody's banged up the Falcons didn't have their left tackle in this game. We're going to get into that. Well we're going to get into the state of the Atlanta Falcons roster and why I'd not really I don't need the tears from the Saints about who they're who's not playing in this game. That performance and what their run defenses looks like all season Carl Granderson and Kate Nellis are not the difference in you going from what your run defense looks like in the back half of last year to what it looked like tonight and Derek rightfully you pointed this out when they played the Ravens and I expected it to get at least a little bit better over the course of the year because they were a very good run defense unit last year and it just hasn't. So I don't really doesn't really matter if you're out a couple starters. It shouldn't look like that. Thank you for saying that and I'll even add that Pete Werner was like not guaranteed to play in this game. They were monitoring his health heading in but I felt like I was taking crazy pills to you know three quarters of the way through it just felt like they kept bringing up how beat up the Saints were on defense and I was like I do not see the absence that should make this understandable like every team is beat up and like Kate Nellis is a phenomenal football player but there's there's nothing here from a personnel standpoint that makes me think it's okay to give up a 58% rushing success rate let B. John Robinson and Brian Robinson basically do whatever they wanted to you like this is as healthy as you could possibly expect to be in the NFL in a regular week and it didn't hold water with me and and I thought it was weird that they brought it up as often as they did. I want to just go through some of the players on the Atlanta Falcons today that played more than 20 snaps in their front seven okay. Locale London Kendall Daniels who I is like a fifth round rookie Mason Smith who was traded right before the season in a r-trash for your trash for Rookaroo roll road trade. Yeah, Zach Harrison and a smart trade right where it's like I don't think he fits our system but he might fit yours and I think they needed more of a run stuffer and so they traded for Mason Smith whatever. So Mason Smith who was traded in a player for player swap who were both teams retired of the guys that they had. Cam Thomas who's making $3 million this year. Yassir Abdullah who I believe is still on his rookie deal and is making next to nothing this season. Samson Ebukam who can't be making any money. Brandon Dorolas who's a mid-round pick. Gervon Dexter who they traded for a fifth round pick before the season started. Harold Perkins who's also a rookie. These are the guys who are making up the Atlanta Falcons front seven right now. And I don't mean to poke fun at them. They put on one hell of a performance. They destroyed the Saints offensive line in this game. They deserve a ton of credit. And you know, else deserves a ton of credit. Jeff Olbrecht's one hell of a football coach. Hell yeah. Yes. For two years in a row. The Atlanta Falcons are try not all these dudes and last year they had better players. Last year they had Jay. We talk about players being out. James Pierce thing is what it is as to why he's not playing. Jayland Walker was the best player in this front seven. He has not played it down. He won't play this entire year. David Aniamata was the one veteran they had last year. He's not on the roster anymore. This was a top 10 defense coming into the year. And they absolutely beat the shit out of the Saints today. They deserve so much credit. Again, getting back to the point at the beginning. At its core, this is a simple game. This is about attitude. It's about physicality. And you watch the way that that group played. Oh, yeah. AJ Terrell isn't out there too, by the way. You watch how that group played. And it's just it's incredible what they're bringing from an attitude mentality mindset whenever that group is on the field. And you think about what Jeff Olbrecht did with the Jets and what this group looks like. And he just deserves a ton of credit. That entire staff deserves so much credit for how those guys are playing right now. It's really impressive. I know you were focusing on the front seven, but Sydney Brown was all over the damn place in this game. Like they got a they got like a sack out of Xavier Watts, who's who continues to look like a really fun player. Like, and the broadcast did a good job. Everybody knows Bajan is amazing in prime time. This Falcon's defense kicks into another level when they play in these sorts of games. I mean, that bills game from last year around this time of years burned into my brain. And they flipped a lot of it over and their beat to shit. And obviously the Saints are not the Josh Allen bills, but they still went into New Orleans and beat the hell out of a an offense that has looked very, very proficient and very exciting for a lot of the first three weeks of the season. I think the world of Jeff Olbrecht, man. I'd love watching his team play. I just can't believe that they in like this offensive line for the Saints isn't perfect. And they're a little bit banged up. They obviously don't have their left tackle either. It's a quarterback that I've joked. This is like pretty slow off his spot when he's going to get pressured. But the fact that they were still it's not even just them scheming it up stuff like guys like you mentioned, Robert. Cam Thomas is just like winning clean inside moves on some of these like you dola. Yeah, they were just winning, bringing forward the entire game. They had almost a 50% pressure rate without blitzing in this game. If you look at the next gen numbers like that, there was some fancy stuff like they got home on a couple pressures. They're going to do a little bit of bit of that. But it's not as if this was we're bringing the house all day and the Saints have no answer for it. This is we're just winning over the course of the game with these dudes. And that's something to be really proud of like that. That's something that makes me take notice. Yeah, like they they were just really cool. And especially to to kick into that gear, not just with the past rush stuff because obviously like schematically they do some of that. The Saints like you mentioned could not run the ball. And they haven't run the ball at all this year. But this like if we're just looking at the names on the rosters, you should be able to do it a little bit against this Falcons front. And the fact that they couldn't really do it at all and continue to in these games, kind of abandon it. And I don't really blame them for that. It that to me is like again, there are so many exciting parts about this Saints offense and team and we'll talk about that. But like you said, if you can't run the ball and you can't stop the run, you're never going to control a game. It's it's kind of like what the Dallas Cowboys were last year, where they couldn't stop the run and they couldn't run the ball as well as they wanted once they got a little bit banged up. And this is like if you took that roster and made them 30% worse. I before I move on, let's take a quick break. When I was excited about what the Saints could do in the NFC South this year, part of the enthusiasm was driven by the fact that I really liked what they did in the passing game last year. I really liked what I saw from Tyler Schuck. I was excited about what he could do with a Lava and Jordan Tyson, even when Tyson getting hurt and go, okay, you still have a quarterback that showed some flashes as a rookie. Chris Lava is a superstar. He's playing incredibly well and continues to play incredibly well. You invested in the run game. You put more on the quarterback in terms of how you play last year. If you look at just run action rate, how often they were running the ball. I mean, this was an offense that was putting a burden on the quarterback in the same way that the bangles do with Joe burrow with the rookie. Like, that just shouldn't be the case. And I expected them to ease some of that this year. You invest in ETN and free agency. You sign David Edwards and free agency. Let's have a little bit more of a cohesive offense where everything fits together. We can lean on the run game a little bit. Losing ETN and Kelvin Banks shouldn't torpedo that entire thing. Like you show, you still should have a plan. Like you said, Derek, Jake Matthews got hurt in the middle of this game. I know that bizzhan is walking through the door for the Falcons, but this is a team that signed Jawant Taylor off the street before the season started and has their backup left tackle for 50 of the 60 snaps on offense and the run of the ball will. Like, there's no explanation as to why the Falcons should be able to do that and why you can't do anything on the ground if you're the saint's correct me if I'm wrong, but and I understand it's a big disappointing loss. But Calvin Banks is the only problem right now. Correct. Like the rest of that stuff. No, I mean, I just mean the line. I just mean the office of line. And even HN they weren't using him as much as you would think given the amount of money they gave him. Absolutely. And so this is you can try to explain it away because of who's not playing. But one, I don't think that's a reasonable argument to it's a hard argument to make when you look at what's happening on the other side. Tyler Shuck has currently thrown 180 passes this year. That's got it. Is that leading? I like on on pace stats this early in the season are not worth getting excited about. But like he would be on pace to set like an NFL record like going throwing more than 700 pass attempts is silly shit. And honestly, if I was looking for copium coming out of this game as a Saints fan, the fact that this is Tyler Shuck's life and he doesn't look completely overwhelmed and like it's breaking him is pretty encouraging because nobody is supposed to throw the ball that off and let alone a second year player. It's so hard to play offense this way. It's just so incredibly hard to play offense this way. What you're putting on your quarterback and what you're putting on your offensive line, the offensive line is going to look worse when you're doing this to them. You're laying them out to dry. The Falcon's defense deserves a ton of credit. But if you're going to play this way, you're asking so much from that group of fun. I'm looking at those stats right now. Tyler Shuck through nine passes or excuse me, Tyler Shuck through 11 passes with with play action today 11. That's how many Michael Penex threw without play action. Tyler Shuck through 37 passes without play action in this game. I assume a huge portion of those are from the gun. All you're asking when you're doing that is for the other teams front to tee off the entire game and it allows a group that doesn't have any defined stars and is it a lot of guys who are waiver claims and low, you know, low price free agent signings to look like they did and control the game the way that they did today. And if you look at the other side, like what the Falcon's offense looks like 43% play action on throws without play action in this game. Michael Penex averaged 2.7 air yards per attempt, which is hilarious. On the game, even with a 50% play action rate, he averaged 2.57 average time to throw. They had a night. They had four quarterback pressures. The Saints did in this game because of what the Falcon's plan looks like and how the quarterback plays. The Saints finished. They gave up 25. It's not hard to explain. Like it's just a very easy way to understand how the game unfolds that way. How many attempts in this game did it feel like Tyler Shuck heaving a prayer 25 plus yards down field with just a red streak darting into the picture to smash him. It was especially in the second half. It was every other snap. And you know what this feels like to me. This feels like a lot what happened to the Justin Herbert Kellen Moore Los Angeles Chargers where they could not run the ball the way that they want it. And they had a quarterback that like, Dave, I think you make a great point of like them asking him to throw this much. I think there's like an intoxication of like because Shuck can do it. Like he can live in the dropback world fairly well. But when you're asking any quarterback to do it this much, it's going to be really, really, really difficult and then putting this on a second year player when your star left tackle is banged up. That's just way too much. And again, it feels like that 2023 Herbert season where you're going to have some games and moments where it looks fine because Chris Olave is better than most of the corners. He's going to face and Shuck sees it wasn't well enough when like you said, he's not having a red streak crosses face every single time he drops back. But you're going to have these games like this where you get a little bit outgunned. You get behind on the scoreboard early because your defense sucks. And shit, now we're just so in the ball 50 times and we never have an answer for anything. Shuck had 39 pass attempts from the shotgun in this game. 39. Tough way to live. That's double the amount of attempts that Michael Penix had period in the whole football game. The Falcons are, I mean, the way that looked the first couple of weeks, are we ready to make a real earnest argument that Michael Penix is the MVP of the league? No, but we're talking about pure value. Can you really make an argument that Michael Penix is not been the most valuable player in the NFL this year? I was going to come in here. I was going to come in here and say my, the Falcons can win the division take from August, doesn't look so silly with Michael Penix in the lineup. I'm feeling, I'm feeling pretty good about that. Well, I would get to see this. Did they not? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Oh, in the moment, it might look silly. Right now, why would it look silly? They're two and two. They're tied with everybody else. I do want to say, I'm curious to see. So it's, it's Baltimore, Chicago and San Francisco up next all at home, by the way. So you got a three game homestand against some pretty, some pretty good teams, some teams that we feel pretty strongly about. I'm curious to see how real it is. I'm very impressed by what they've done these last two weeks. And we should, Mia Culpa, because we had a lot of fun joking about the Falcons playing all these prime time games. They're just nuking everybody in prime time. Like, this is incredible. But they're, they're, they're ridiculous blowouts that aren't worth watching. Just like we expected. Yeah, exactly. I do, I want to see it. I want to see these next few weeks and see just how real it looks against some teams. I respect a little bit more. They played the Ravens and the Bears in back-to-back week. So those are the two best teams in the league. And so that's going to be a really good measuring stick just to see where the Falcons are right now. Sneaking shit like this into the show for the rest of the year. It's good though. I appreciate after having done the show for two years where it was like, I can't believe in the Bears. I can't believe in the Bears. I can't believe I love just sneaking in like either the best thing. The Falcons, I think mindset with the staff coming into the year when it's a first year staff. And it's a weird season, right? In the sense that they didn't do a lot this off season when it comes to big swings. They, it was an interstitial year. It was all right. Let's keep our powder dry. Let's figure out who we are. And then maybe we could be a little bit aggressive next year when we got some money to throw around. The last crew pushed all their chips in, used a lot of resources, obviously spent a lot of money. Let's entangle some of that at what's figured out where we are and let's move forward. So the fact that that was the mindset heading into the year understandably, I think they still believe that division was winnable based on how much uncertainty there wasn't all these other places. I think that is proven to be fair, right? The Panthers offense looks good, but the Panthers offense has a bunch of injuries there and in perfect team. I think the Falcons absolutely can be competitive in that division. If you think about it, just in the multi year view, you have to feel really good about them looking like this as soon as they get the quarterback back in a year where they were kind of in a holding pattern. My like weird fear now is that Tommy Reese and Jeff Olbrick aren't here next year based on how the last couple weeks have gone. Like that, that's a fear I didn't think I would have to have coming into the season, but it might be a little bit quick, but I'm starting to get there with what this team has looked like on both sides of the ball over the last couple weeks. Reese feels a little premature, although you never know if a guy's got like play calling sauce teams obviously value that tremendously. Olbrick happens fast. Olbrick, I'm all the way there with you though. Like what he did last year is track record with the Jets when he was under Salah and now doing this again with a defense that came into the year with zero headliners available. I mean, if he if he keeps this up even relatively consistently over the rest of the year, that's that's pretty easy for me to believe. The other takeaway I wanted to throw in there, I think it's really cool that obviously I don't think anybody in the NFC South is a juggernaut. I still think this is a team that's or a division where like the winner of this is probably going to be maybe the three, but probably the four seed. But so often this division has felt tragic. I like this is not a tragic division. This is a very exciting division like rice or tragic. Yeah. And the team that hasn't been tragic over the last few years is the one that's tragic. Everyone else is very watchable. Ironically, the team that's been the most put together over the last four years is the tragic one. But like all these other teams, even the Saints, even after this shit show, have reason for like optimism and like I'm excited to watch them play. And that's a cool change of pace. Like this is an interesting division to me, even if I know the teams aren't fully well rounded. The recent thing I'm interested in because like I'm probably with Dave, I think usually these guys need like two years to prove it in some way, but like sometimes they don't have to be a comment for it to be a year. You've got to do it. Liam Cohen didn't I was going to say Liam feel really good about it where it's like that guy's a made man. After one year, no questions asked. We'll see what happens with the Falcons and Tommy Reese, but I'm very encouraged. But I think what we've seen so far. It's been awesome. Obviously, you know, we can throw out the Cooper rush games, whatever. Since Michael Penex has been back, they just have a clear vision for the offense. And I like how they layer stuff like their screen game and even going back to Cleveland, these two Stefansky and Reese, their screen game has been really, really impressive. And you saw a little bit of that tonight. And I just think that some of the ways that they kind of tying together, like some of their boot stuff, like they had been booting and getting some of that stuff to work all game. And then the dots in touchdown, they run him on like the heat looks like he's going to run a corner on top of Drake London running an overout from the other side. And he snaps it back off to the post because it's a good like constraint play off of what they'd been doing the whole game. And like them just being able to set that stuff up. up over the course of the game, it was why I was kind of excited about this staff in this offense going in. And I just didn't know what we were going to get out of the quarterback. But if they have enough strengths from him that they feel like they can build this thing on, I trust their ability to get there. That, that, that, that's, that play is a Shanahan classic. Oh, absolutely. That, that, that, that's that hiccup play where they've seen them do that a million different times. But you got to make sure that touchdown against the, against the Packers on Sunday night football, like 15 years ago on that play, like 12 years ago on the, I guess there was going to wasn't the lead 15 years ago, but they, they they don't know for like eight or nine years, like let's, we don't have very early in his career. It feels like forever ago. He scored that the, I mean, that we've seen that play a million different times. They were extremely excited about the staff, just extremely excited about the makeup of the staff. Cause this is, we've talked about this. This is tell me Reese's first time from day one is the play collar. They got Tanner extra into come along as their passing game coordinator from the jets. And I think one of the bits of influence you've seen from that is that bet the Ben Johnson system and just like what they were doing with the lions. There's a lot of pre snap kills and checks and cans. And it gives you the opportunity to get into the best play pretty often. And if you watch how often Michael Pentax is getting in and out of stuff at the line of scrimmage, I think that's something they've really been able to lean on. And then Robert Prince came over from Miami. And this team has used a lot more motion than Kevin Stephansky teams have used in previous years. And so I think that there's a lot of stuff that they were able to pull from coming into the year. And they've been able to really build it into cohesive thing. And the vision is very clear because I think they have a really good understanding of how they want to play. And I think Tommy deserves a lot of credit for putting that together in the way that they have over the first month of the season as soon as Michael Pentax got back. Anything else from you guys about Falcons Saints? I have a desperate plea. It's something that has bugged me for a long time. And this feels like a good opportunity to put it on wax. Enough of the delayed sequels. We don't need another act 20 years after the fact. And like that we didn't need the happy Gilmore movie. We didn't need the space jam sequel. And as cool as it sounded to do Falcons Saints in Monday night to celebrate the anniversary of the dome. How does that feel now? How does that feel 20 years after the fact where you're like, this will be great. We'll beat the Falcons just like we did in 2006. And it'll be this positive memory and everybody will love it. And oh, six is untouchable. That'll be as a new Orleanian. That'll be a special moment forever. But to be clear about that, like I want you to be clear that this is like a very important thing to you. You are an outsider who was looking at this. No, 2006 Saints are one of the more important things that's ever happened in your sporting life. I am, I am not being glib. I lived it. I wasn't in the building in '06, but like I lived in New Orleans at that time. It was a very special memory. And as cool as it sounds, and I would have said this before the game, as cool as it sounds to play this game 20 years later, like bring back all those memories. And they did such a cool job. The halftime show was amazing. They really played it up. And now you have this stinky performance sitting there. And like I said, it's not going to like tarnish 2006 that that meant so much to the city and was about so much more that you can't completely touch it. But Falcons fans are going to point to this from now on. Like when you showed the Gleason photo or the Gleason play, they're like, oh, yeah, what about 45 24? And like part of me thinks we would have just been better off leaving '06 there by itself as a singular night. And we didn't need a part two 20 years later. And I mean, it's too late now, but it's one of those things where it sounds like a good idea in theory, but you do have to play the football game. And you just handed your biggest rival a nice bit of ammunition in this ongoing feud. And I don't, I just don't know if I would have done it. I don't think you can capture the St. Falcons energy better than I think that you just did. I mean, that was that was perfect. It's one of the only true, like I hate you rivalries in this. This is this I like this is one of the top three rivalries in the sport. If you want to talk about Bears Packers or Steelers Ravens or you know, there's a few others. If like sure, fine, but this is this is top three top five. And it is pure spite and to to hand the Falcons a dub like this on the on a night that is very important to the city of New Orleans. It just I don't know. It's a little bit of an unforced error in my opinion, but but what if they had one? What if they had one in convincing fashion? Like doesn't that make it all the sweeter is the fact that you have now a second go around of beating the team that you hate the most in a night that was supposed to be special? Absolutely. But I mean, yeah, if you want to tell me no risk, get no biscuit, fine, but like just I don't know, protect, protect these holy memories. That's that's my cowardly opinion. But like I said, you're not really ever going to tarnish what happened in 2006, but like now now this is part of the story and it didn't have to be. I love two minds about it because I think that there would have been a different time in my life, or I probably would have agreed with you. And then I think about what Ben Johnson has done over the last two years and how the downside of what he's the downside of what he's doing is extremely real. I think the downside is there the moment that the Packers win a game against the Bears in convincing fashion and then blow them out and when that when that when that whenever that happens, they're going to hear about it. But at the same time, even if you're making the stakes a little bit higher, when you win, it does make it a little bit sweeter. And so it cuts both ways. I understand what you're saying, but I've, and I think I've kind of danced on that line a lot over the last year or so as I've watched the coach of the team I root for openly antagonize the other fan base and the other staff with absolutely no disregard whatsoever. There's there's an argument on both sides of it, but that was like at half time when Trombone Shorty was putting on this like this incredible show. I was like, ah, this doesn't hit the same when you're getting run out of your own building. Like this isn't as fun as it was in 2006. Derek, before we get out here, what'd you think of the Pentax games tonight? He was fine. I thought that he was okay. I was a lot more impressed by the way that it was called. And if he's going to have, again, he can throw the ball really well down the field. I think that they skimmed enough of that stuff up, but he didn't throw the middle of the field. And I think that that's really going to be like, what is going to change my mind at some point if we get there. I think the other, he just doesn't, he's not a creative thrower when it comes to like doing things on the move. He doesn't have a lot of clubs in the bag. Like that's always going to be something that he struggles with. And even that throw where he's trying to pop the ball over. I can't get his chase young to be John in the flat. It's just he struggles with that stuff. Like he's just, he's kind of a one speed one trajectory thrower. And it's beautiful when he's able to do that stuff in rhythm. But when he's pushed off of it, you feel the cracks a little bit. And so and it was kind of a Michael Pentax game. It was a well-called Michael Pentax game. I think is what we got from the Falcons tonight. And when you have their this running game and when you're asking him off play action to push the ball down the field, I think this can be a really cool offense. But I also feel like we saw tonight some of his limitations in a way that we didn't really see against the Packers because we didn't have to. Yeah, there's limitations. We can talk about that like as the year goes on. But so long as those two other guys around the roster and one of these guys in Stifantzky and Reese are calling the offense. I think I think they'll be okay. I do have enough faith in that. It's a little different than this go position players. They hadn't cleaned over the last couple years. A little bit a little bit than than Jerry Judy. As you feel the difference a little bit. All right. That is all we've got for tonight. If you're watching this on YouTube, please go check out the week for Hangover for watching this on Tuesday. Me and Derek broke down three games from the Sunday slate. Chad a little bit about the Sunday night game. Also hit Chargers Seahawks regrettably and then dug into Cardinals Giants. Got plenty more stuff coming this week for now. That's all we got. Appreciate you guys listening. Talk to you very soon. Thanks for tuning in. Make sure to hit that subscribe or follow button so you never miss an episode. If you enjoyed what you heard, please like, comment and leave a rating. We'll see you next time. [Music]