On Air | Matt Schaub: Fixing Atlanta’s Issues After the Colts Loss

On Air | Matt Schaub: Fixing Atlanta’s Issues After the Colts Loss

[Music] Atlanta pros play on the fan and every week we talk Atlanta football with former QB Matt Shaw keep it throw it touch presented by A1 Driveway replacement locallyowned professionally poured your new driveway in just one day visit a1driveway.com well Shabby another weekend more opportunities and another time where the Falcons just find a different place to lose and a different way to lose. Uh first and foremost, good morning. Uh hope you’re doing well. I know it was a tough football weekend for you and your household between the Falcons and what happened to the Cavaliers as well. It was a tough weekend. Good morning, y’all. It was um hopefully we can write the ship in all phases this weekend coming up. But yeah, going to the the Falcons and the Colts game, I mean, it couldn’t have gotten off to a better start for the team, right? When you look at it, defense is on the field, get a fourth down stop, turnover on downs, um, sets the offense up, and they move the ball down, and then, you know, it just seemed like from there things kind of fell apart. The continuity and the consistency that we’re hoping for, Kyle Pittz with a big drop. You know, Michael Panks Jr. put the ball on a deep crosser. Perfect. He might score on that play. Mhm. And then that leads to a third down play with a strip sack fumble that who knows what the audible was supposed to be or where the ball was supposed to go. It looked like some miscommunication, but Michael Penn Jr. made the right read. He saw allout pressure. He audible, changed the route. He was started looking at Kyle Pittz who ran like a hitch and go, which he wasn’t going to run by the defender. But you have to know as a quarterback, I can’t hold this football. And if you look at the other side of the field, Bjon has a flat route with two blockers in front of him and he might he for get the ball to him in the flat into the teeth of the blitz and he might score on that play too. So there’s just so many things that until we know what took place or what the calls are supposed to be, but that start couldn’t have been any better if they just execute those in those critical moments. Yeah. And then you give up a short field on that turnover and it’s a touchdown. Then they have to go two plays and 23 yards. So you put yourself behind the eightball. You answer with a nice five play 80 yard drive for a touchdown and get rock and roll and start feeling uh a certain way and you kind of go back and forth for a minute in that ball game. Talk about what you see in Michael Penn in the pocket, out of the pocket, what he’s doing with his legs and and what what how can he get better. Well, I think continue to drill. He’s they got they have got to get an individual period and have an extended period and just work on footwork and timing and getting a defeat going. I feel when I watch him play, every drop and everything he does mechanically with his feet is the same. And sometimes that’s a good thing, but also certain routes require different type of footwork, different type of rhythm, different type of timing to be able to be in sync with your body to be able to throw the ball and throw it accurately. Whether it’s a quick out, a deep out, a deep inut, you know, all these things require a certain rhythm and a certain timing with your feet. Some are more extended, some have to be quicker drops. And that’s where I think sometimes he misses throws or he misses reads because his footwork isn’t tied to where the ball is supposed to go. And as a quarterback, everything starts from the ground up. And I think that that is really a product of being in the pistol. I know we talk about it every week and that is just the biggest thing with this offense. He is just tied to being five yards deep, whether the back’s next to him in the shotgun or right behind him, two yards in the back field. There’s just so little you can do from a timing standpoint in the passing game when you’re in that formation and it really hurts with the play pass game. And listen, the the pistol for all intents and purposes when you’re in the shotgun and pistol, a lot of what you want to do is zone read. We’re not a zone read team. Michael Pennix Jr. not running the zone read, not taking off read in the edge like a Jane Daniels might occasionally or Lamar Jackson does. That’s just not his game. You need to be under center. You need to be able to let the run game work from there and then you can really sell play action. He’s a rhythm pocket passer. Sell play action, come off a fake, displace defenders in the second level of the defense. And then you have Kyle Pittz and Drake London running those second level crossers. And guess what? If the defense turns and bails out of there to cover them, you’re dumping it off with 10 yards of space to your best playmaker in Bjon Robinson and letting him go to work. And you see that when you watch the Colts offense when they had the ball, that’s what they were doing. They were putting Daniel Jones under center with two tight ends, the tight formation with receivers, running hard play action to Jonathan Taylor, and Daniel Jones was coming off that fake and he had six, seven yards of space in that pocket to just survey the secondary and hit his guys down the field or check it down to his backs. And that’s the type of thing that I when I look at these two teams just from Sunday, they are built offensively with their personnel so similarly that that is really the type of scheme and type of offense you want to see out of the Atlanta Falcons and that and I think you’re going to see a better run production on a consistent basis, but you’re also putting your quarterback who’s still a young player in the best chance to be successful. That’s such that’s such good perspective, Shabi. I I’m curious with the Panthers, the Saints, and the Jets being the next three, uh, aside from wins, piggybacking on what you were just talking about, what would you like to see look different offensively between Zack Robinson, Penn, and so on and so forth. The number one thing is consistency, but that that’s easy to say. I you need to find easy completions for this young quarterback. I feel like so many times they make things so hard on themselves. They’re throw trying to throw down the field on first down, second down, then they get in third and eight plus. And those are hard situations against any NFL defense to convert. You need to find easy completions, easy plays, quick game. Get the ball out of your hand. Screens. Do we have enough wide receiver screens, SC normal screens to the running back or play pass screens to the back or to a tight end and just let them go and get a first and 10 to a second and three and stay ahead of the chains and just develop some rhythm and continuity. But take care of the quarterback especially early in the game. Get some easy completions. Um I don’t see a ton of changes in season right now. I don’t they haven’t done it yet. They’re not going to change from the pistol or the shotgun. Okay, that’s not going to happen because we had they haven’t done it yet. That’s something if you’re going to do, you’re going to do it on the by-week, but they’re not going to do that. I’d love to see it, but let’s just get off to a good start with easy, safe completions to get Michael Panks Jr.’s confidence up, the offenses confidence up. Obviously, there’s some injuries on the offensive line. So, let’s just get those guys into the flow and the rhythm of the game. But at the end of the day, these next three games, you have to take them one at a time. But, you need to win all three. You need to get back into your season, get to six and six, and see what happens from there. Football’s a crazy game. But you can’t drop any one of these three games. You have to win all of them. Yeah, makes sense. Hey, speaking of that confidence for Penn, I we should have sent this to you just in case you haven’t seen it, but did you happen to catch Michael Penn on the podium and answering some questions in what felt like a very dejected, very broken manner of just it’s like he he’s so frustrated. You can just see it. But I mean, did you have a chance to see that or hear any of it? And I mean, give us any perspective of kind of I mean, how he’s feeling right now? Yeah, you know, I’ve seen a few of them this year. I saw some uh clips from the other day. Um but it’s understandable after a game the way it ended and the way it had had transpired and obviously he didn’t play well and he knows it. And so you’re not going to go up there with smiles and be cheery, you’re going to be somewhat dejected, but you do need to find some sense of confidence because guess what? Everyone sees that and they’re going to replay it. You noticed it. Guess what? Your teammates are going to notice it. So you do have to have a little bit of a yeah, you just lost and and you didn’t play well as a quarterback. You were in the game. You went to overtime, right? But yeah, you lost. So how do you correct that? But you have to instill some belief. You have to have some sort of display confidence and that you as the quarterback are going to make sure that you do your job going forward and that you’re going to come in ready to uh go Wednesday morning when the starts to game week, the prep for the the Panthers this week and show your teammates like, hey, you need to jump on board cuz we’re going to correct this stuff. And so that’s what you hope to see. But I get I get being dejected. I get being frustrated because of the way things have been going for the team. But um you know for him this is just all part of the learning process everyone sees and and the the talent level and the arm and all of that. He still is just coming around to finishing one complete season as a starting quarterback. So it let’s not compare him to other guys that have did this or that in their first year. He’s still learning and so he needs to have the right people around him and the right people in his ear helping him along in that process that has been through it themselves that can give him some perspective on the the the trials and tribulations of an NFL season. He’s our quarterback Matt Chab. He joins us via the loud security systems news maker line. What do you do with the new overtime rules if you know you win the coin flip and um both guys are going to get a chance to possess the football, right? So, if you go on defense first and then maybe they kick a field goal, maybe you stop, maybe they score a touchdown, at least you know what you got to do in order to either win the game or tie the game back up. Um, do you agree or disagree with the with the choice to take the ball first in overtime? I don’t disagree with that. I’m I’m I’m an offensive guy, Finn. Come on. you you’re the same way. You’d want the ball, don’t you? You don’t want to like watch Listen, we Let’s go back to 2016, the Super Bowl. We went into overtime against the Patriots. They got the ball. We never got it back. I know the rules are different now, but you want to have the ball. You want to be in control of your own destiny if you’re you’re the offensive football team. So, I would take the ball every day of the week. You get an extra down in case you need it. You can kind of see the feel what’s going on. It’s fine. I think it’s to each his own, but most people not name Shabi and play quarterback and like offense would go the other way. I think I think and then the other thing I thought we saw you you changed, Ben. You’ve changed. I don’t know what’s going on with you, man. I’m sorry. Uh the other thing we saw at the end of the game for the field goal, I mean, they’re kind of have to rush. They got 24 seconds or something to get a field goal team on the on the field and try to kick a field goal, but Raheem calls a timeout to kind of get himself situated and see if they can’t get a drive late drive down the field. Yeah. Yeah. I was fine with how that that played out. The one thing that concerned me was um yeah, you know, I get the different, you know, ways of calling timeouts to get the ball back to preserve as much time as possible. I think if you know you’re going into overtime, you just kind of I I get that situation in that scenario. Let’s just extend the game. So, um I I didn’t really have much of a problem with that. So, we were having some fun earlier, Shabi. I don’t know if you heard us talking about Gen X and things our kids couldn’t do. Um, we were talking about playing uh toss up tackle which was called a very different name by a lot of things. Are there is there anything that you did as a youth that your kids would have no chance of doing right now? Like I told I know my kids they don’t know how to write in cursive. My son signs his name like he’s seal. He just signs it cane and nothing else. I had to teach him how to do that. Are there any things from Gen X that you wish you could have your kids do right now that they’d have no chance of accomplishing? Oh man, I I did listen to this segment. Um, and you know, I think about it. I just remember like leaving the house and telling my parents like, “Hey, I’m riding my bike over to so and so’s house.” And they could be on the other side of the neighborhood, like 10-minute bike ride away. And they’re like, “All right, yeah, no problem. Come on. Just be home by dinner.” Um, I just don’t My kids aren’t doing that. Um, not that it’s just something you don’t see. The other thing, it’s funny, my wife just texted me because she was listening too, and she said, “Hey, um, kids these days don’t realize that teachers used to be able to discipline the kids and the students in their class, like I had a teacher that had a yard stick, carried around a yard stick while they taught, and if you weren’t paying attention or something, like they could handle handle you right there then and there.” And so that’s just something that you can’t do in society whatsoever at all anymore. That’s a mean street in Philadelphia. I say you can’t even talk to the kids too tough anymore. We had paddles. Like literally our teacher when I was in elementary school had a paddle and dude 100% they had a wooden paddle and if you did something wrong you got paddles. That is true. I got spanked a couple of times throughout elementary school and maybe middle school. That doesn’t paddles from days being confused. It may have been. Yeah, fraternity paddles basically. Yeah, we had those. Well, it’s always good to talk to you Shabi. Hopefully your Cavaliers and the Falcons can bounce back this upcoming week and we’ll catch up with you coming up next uh Tuesday. All right.

Former NFL and Falcons quarterback Matt Schaub joined The Locker Room to break down Atlanta’s loss to the Colts in Germany. Schaub discussed the team’s ongoing four-game skid, what needs to change to get the Falcons back on track, and the steps the coaching staff can take to restore Michael Penix Jr.’s confidence moving forward.

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