Evaluating the loss to Miami & how to return to the win column for New England | Falcons Audible

Evaluating the loss to Miami & how to return to the win column for New England | Falcons Audible

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Um, and then we’ll uh go ahead and turn the page and we’ll talk about New England Patriots because that’s the next on the docket and the only game that matters is the next game. However, but when you’re in our business, you got to go back and you got to look and you got to talk. And I’m sure a lot of you that are listening and watching want to hear us tell you why or how why or how did that game happen. Arch, I’m going to start with you. If you go back before the season started and you started looking at the calendar and this is where you can fall into a trap, right? You can fall into a trap in the National Football League. You can see three games that say Miami, New England, Indianapolis, and you’re like, gosh, that’s a favorable stretch right there. And then you actually start playing football. Then you play the game. Then you actually play the game. Um, and you get a one in6 Dolphins team that’s playing upset, playing inspired, playing motivated because they got absolutely called out the previous week. Uh, they got embarrassed the previous week, the previous two weeks, if you will. Um, and then you look up and you got two teams in the Patriots division leader, Colts division leader, one of the best teams in the league, leading the National Football League in scoring. Um, you know what, that thing that you circled that looked like pretty manageable games, not so much anymore. Not so much. But let’s talk about this Dolphins game. Arch because it was a situation where Atlanta coming off a poor performance against San Francisco thinking this has got to be a bounceback game. You’re facing a team that’s reeling. You’re facing a team and a quarterback that’s given the football away. Okay. And so you’re thinking we’re licking our chops defensive side, right? We’re licking our chops because we’re going to have a chance for takeaways. We’re licking our chops offensively because there were not a good run defense statistically. And then everything but that happened. No takeaways, two of throws for four touchdowns, no picks, and they absolutely shut down the run game. How in the world did it just completely 360 around? No, it’s the National Football League, right? You’re not ready to play. And and not saying that the team wasn’t the Falcons weren’t ready to play. I think you give more accolades and and and maybe shine the light a little bit more on Miami as opposed to what Atlanta didn’t do. But Atlanta contributed to that uh performance by Tua and and by the Dolphin defense. Um but I think that when you when you look at and you try to kind of dig down deep as to why this game went a certain way. It starts great. I mean you go three and out on defense. Got a really cool design defensively. They run motion across. Nobody goes with him. So you’re thinking zone if you’re Tua right Shock. You’re thinking zone. And then all a sudden boom here come two guys off the edge. They got the quarterback on the ground. Couldn’t have started any better with a sack. Uh De Alford comes in and gets the sack with Ellis coming clean as well. So you start perfectly. You get the football and dysfunction begins. You you run it twice for nothing and then they run a they run a threeman stunt to the left side. Here comes a guy clean in Kirk’s face. He barely gets it out to pits. And so you start sleepily, if that’s such a word. Sleepily off though. Sleepily offensively. Uh and then they get the football and what they go on a 19play drive or something like that to move move it down the field. So, um, when you dig through the minutia for me, guys, is, um, it’s, okay, why why did the defense get run on and all that kind of you can talk about, okay, what they’re doing schematically, all this kind of stuff. Extra offensive lineman in the game, whatever you want to talk about. You’re on the field too much defensively. Okay. You’re on the field for 38 minutes. Okay. At some point, I’m going to figure out how to attack you. Yeah. Um on the conversely on the other side you were four for 15 in third in in conversion situations that counts third down and fourth down that contributes to what happened to your defense. You can say well what’s the best way to help our defense stop the run? Don’t have them on the field for 38 minutes. Yep. Yeah. And so the offense was dysfunctional in conversion situations and it wasn’t third and long guys. It was fourth and three, third and five and you didn’t you didn’t convert. So what leads to that? It leads to there there’s a number of things. You can talk about design of offense and you can talk about all the things, but ultimately it’s about executing the plays, executing your job at the highest possible level. And we didn’t play well up front. We didn’t play well at the quarterback position. And I didn’t think we overly were decisive from a wide receiver standpoint. Other than that, we were pretty good on offense. Those three things that you said though were awfully awfully uh large. Um Shock, I’m going to repeat this because different audience, but on the pregame show, Taylor was talking to me. This was post San Francisco about thinking back to my career and how do you find consistency? Okay. And so I went back and and I’m going to I’m going to kind of quiz you guys here because this is 2004 season. Okay. And that season we had two separate four-ame winning streaks. I said, “Well, how do you get consistent?” Is you got to find winning streaks, right? You got to find a way to put yourself in position to where you’re looking at postseason. That only happens by winning games. And when you’re struggling, you got to find ways to stack one after another after another. But I said, “Yeah, that’s all elementary. It’s like rack. I understand you got to win games. You got to get on a winning streak. That’s fine and dandy. How do you do it?” Okay. And I said that year we did what we did best better than anybody else and we ran the football. Okay, both four game streaks we averaged like I want to say it was 180 or 170 rushing yards a game and then it was like 185 rushing yards a game. Like we absolutely dominated in the ground game. Now fast forward to 2025 fellas. What does Atlanta do really well? Like they’re a running football team. like their offensive line has been together for a long time. They got one of the most dynamic running backs in the National Football League and then they have the bowling ball of razor blades behind him, right? Did I say that correctly? You said you were nailing it. You nailed it. But two weeks in a row, Shock, what we do best has disappeared. And that’s a problem. It is a problem. And when you hang your hat on that particular part of the game and it doesn’t work and you have to adjust, that’s when that’s when things start to to spiral out of control for you and things don’t really go as planned. And I think the last couple weeks when we haven’t been able to run the football or we haven’t dominated the line of scrimmage and then we have to turn to something else and it’s not really what our forte is, then there’s when things start to come up. and Arch mentioned it. Didn’t think that, you know, on the outside that, you know, you played relatively well. When I watched the game, I go back and look at it and then I I think about it more. You you think about how hard it was for completions, how tough it was. Everything it felt like was contested. Everything felt like if a guy caught the ball, there was a guy there or it was a really it was just hard to get yards it felt like. And uh Art Arch did a great job of talking about some of the things that obviously that has struggled for us offensively with when it comes to the run game and you know having uh guys be able to you know change the line of scrimmage on us. I mean the a prime example is you know on the 3 four yard line and we we dang near there get a safety because there’s push back in the back field first and then you got the run through by the backer. That’s something that obviously they seen on tape from last week. run blitzes, run calls, and certain things tell defensive guys, hey, this is what’s coming. And I think ultimately it just comes down to a mindset to be honest. And for years, we’ve always talked about it’s third and one, fourth and one, and they know you’re going to run the football. Oh well, okay, they know it. Stop it. And I think the mindset has to get back to just being the more physical team. Ultimately comes down to that guy in front of you, you moving that guy in front of you or not. And ultimately last I think couple last couple weeks we haven’t done that and that’s been probably the biggest issue. And then when we can’t run the football it’s like okay let’s try to use play action. Let’s try to use stuff that how you going to use play action when you’re not running the football not respecting it. Right. So but that’s part of your that’s part of your game plan. That’s part of who you are as an offense and it’s how you set certain things up. So, it’s tough to be able to to to have things go with other things if the first part of it is not working, which is to run the football, guys. Um, there is an element to this of players not playing. Okay. Um, and I’m going to just I’m not going to talk just about Atlanta. I want to give you some examples from around the league. Okay. Baltimore Ravens have been ravaged on defense and their quarterback has not played the last two games. Ravens struggling. Okay. Then you flip over to the NFC. Just think about this. Giants, what have they done? Made a quarterback change. Okay, Vikings quarterback’s been injured. They had to they’ve had to pivot. All right. By the way, these two both of these teams are at the bottom of their division. Saints quarterback issues. A lot of other things going on. Bottom of the division. All right. Cardinals, Kyler Murray, he got hurt. They’ve had to go to the backup quarterback. They’re two and five. Even the 49ers at their five and three, their starting quarterback has been hurt. However, M. Jones come comes in and he’s been playing really well. The moral of the story, fellas, is when your starter in the NFL is not playing, that is a bad thing. Okay? There’s not too many backups in the National Football League that come out and they actually take the league by storm. Then when you compound, there’s no Jaylen Walker. There’s no Zack Harrison. Um, obviously no Drake London in the game. We see what type of difference maker he is. Arch, how much can you attribute to Diablo? Those guys that have been mainstays at their positions, not in the lineup. Well, if you’re overly dependent on the guys that are out, which I think applies to what H Shock just mentioned, Deon Diablo, you felt you got him in free agency and you thought, okay, he’ll blend nicely into the defense. He hasn’t just blended nicely in the defense. He might be your best player on defense based on what we try to do because of his versatility. We saw that this weekend because they tried to expose his backup in coverage, which is what Devine Diablo did in college. He was a he was a safety and they’ve converted him to linebacker. So, I hear what you’re saying about guys being out and certainly you contribute some of the the drop off from an offensive standpoint or defensive standpoint to guys not being on the field, but everybody’s dealing with that. You just mentioned a bunch of teams and and some of them are struggling, some of them are not. We played the 49ers on a Sunday night and they had the both their inside linebackers were gone. You’d have thought we were playing the 85 Bears. I mean, they were coming downhill stop in the run game. So, um I think that that can be overblown a little bit um from a from a missing and and Pennix has only been out one game. So, what happened prior to that? He was in the game in Carolina. he was in the game in San Francisco. So I think that so now you have to dive deeper into it. And when I look at people being able to gang up on the run, why are they able to stop the run game? What’s going on with our run game? Are we getting away from it too quickly or are there some tells that are giving teams now they have tape on how to defend Bjan Robinson and Tyler Algier? I’m leaning towards the ladder in that situation. So now, Zack Robinson, I’m sure, is over in the library right now with, you know, or in the in the laboratory right now with with TJ Yates and and Coach Williams and all those guys, Coach Petri, trying to figure out how do we show them what we’ve been doing and have counters off of it. And some of that has to do with what Shock’s saying. If they’re going to come downhill and stop the run, we have to touch them in the passing game. And that means play action. I got to show run and I got to show what I normally show with Bjon and it’s got to mesh with our our our our playaction game. If you can do that, there’s going to be explosives all over the field. Also, we don’t have I don’t want to be brutally honest here, but we don’t have man beater guys on the perimeter. You’ve got one guy if Drake’s out because Drake can do it from a basketball perspective. He also runs better than people think he does. But you’ve got one man beater on the perimeter as long as Bjon’s in the backfield. That’s Darnell Mooney. Yeah. So, I’ve got to create opportunities if we’re going to see man coverage and get ready. Verbel’s going to play man coverage. No doubt cuz they’re going to do the same thing they’ve seen last couple. And that’s what they do anyway is they try to crowd the line of scrimmage and they play man. They trust their secondary. And what they’ve seen on tape is Atlanta can’t beat you if we play man coverage. So, I’ve got to get guys running away from people so I can make some throws on the move to guys run away. And Mooney to me is a guy that we’re running him on deep post routes. In all honesty, guys, if I was going to pick a guy for a 50/50 guy that’s going to be tight coverage, that’s not the guy I’m picking. But if I got Mooney running shallow crossing route and a guy’s trying to trail him, I like that. I’m going to get him the football. He’s explosive. These are just these things that I’m seeing. nobody’s telling me this or anything like that. And there are things you can you can you can create and and things you can do. So, um, as much as I want to run the football, I think you got to do some of those things to counteract. And I want I want both of you guys to chime in on this because you make a great point as far as how do you run away from the defense and create some some explosive plays. And you were kind of alluding to maybe a little bit of speed, but I want to counterback and I want to say what about guys like Puka Nakua, Cooper Cup, Lad Makoni. I wouldn’t necessarily say those guys are run away from the defense. So how do those guys get so much success when you maybe have more possession route runners and not necessarily creating separation from coverage? Well, you’re creating it by the route you’re running. Shock. You know, you run a shallow drag route. I you know if I get the guy in a trail position and I stair step him boom all of a sudden I’ve got create I’ve got separation and by the way Nakua can run pretty well and so can Manki but but all these guys can run to a certain extent create them an opportunity to beat man coverage I think there’s too many to me if I’m a quarter and I’m looking at it from our perspective Shock if I see a team that’s going to play man coverage I want the option for my guys to read it out and as if It’s man, boom, I’m running away. And running away, I don’t mean running away because of his speed. I’m talking about running away because of the way the route, what the route is. I don’t want guys running a stop route. I’m helping the guy defender out, you know, but I’ve got to have those readout plays and we have those in the system where they’re reading coverage. If it’s man, boom, I’m running away. If it’s zone, I’m getting in a hole and I’m sitting down. And those are the kind of things that I think we’re we’re a little bit dysfunctional on. Not that we don’t have it in the system. I think I think Zach’s calling it. We’ve got to execute it better. That’s why I get back to the execution. And Shock, he makes a great point because and I can say from my, you know, tight end days and practice and everything that a lot of route running and getting open is using little things to your advantage. Like I think you could look at a guy like Devonte Adams now later in his career, DeAndre Hopkins, right? What do these guys do really well is they know how to use their body. They know how to set defenders up and they know how to create separation because maybe they’re not as quick and fast as they used to be, but they’re so savvy Shock that the nuances of route running. They understand all that and they understand where the defense is trying to attack and then how do I counter that to get myself even more open to show the quarterback that he can throw me the football. One guy that instantly ran into my brain as you talked about that. It was a guy that I saw. Art, you called his games. Rack, you knew him like it’s yesterday. I mean, Tony Gonzalez, how about Tony Gonzalez? The guy was maybe 49, maybe 49 running, but how many times did he create separation by his routes? And you would see him come out and it would be, you know, methodical and whatever you want. And then all of a sudden, he’s created three, four yards of separation by the way he moves, the nuances at the top of the route, using his body to create the space. Guys like that understand space, understand leverage of players. And I think that’s part of it, too, is understanding that if you’re not as fast, you got to be able to use those small little details within a route that gets you open. I think that’s what Drake does really well. He does a really good job of those option routes or when he’s running those circus routes and you know he’s trying to lean on a guy to create it to as he’s going out. He knows exactly what to do to lean on a guy. I mean the touchdown he had a few weeks back where he’s you know in the end zone he stems a guy. He goes vertical and then he stems him out to the left to create space from him and the safety and then all of a sudden boom he hooks it really quickly. Like those small things give you an opportunity to win on routes even in small spaces. And I think that’s part of the game that I think a lot of guys are still learning maybe that are running these particular routes. And then the other part is what Arch mentioned was the execution part of it. We had a fourth down call in the ball game and we throw the fade route to Cado and regardless of you know uh the the throw I thought the decision and execution of it wasn’t there. And that’s part of the small little things of winning in games that helps you sustain drives, helps you continue to go. And you mentioned Mooney, maybe that’s not the guy you want to throw to fourth and three fade route to. We love Haj. He’s he played great for us, but maybe that’s not the one you want to do. There’s somebody else who can win probably on on the outside that gives you a chance to convert that. And I just there were points in the ball game where the execution decision-m I thought was not where it should be. And the ball should have went somewhere else as opposed to where it went. So dead on. So dead on. I mean, you got a 3x one set. You’ve got Cadero Hodgej matched up on a 6-2 corner. Okay. And I’m going to run a fade. Okay. One, Cadero didn’t run a great route because he gets pinched to the sideline. But I mean, we I glance over there. Sure, you want to take a look at shots. As quarterbacks, we’re taught there’s a shot play built into almost everything. Unless it’s quick game, there’s a shot play built in. Take a glance. If he wins clean, boom, put it on him. But if it’s if it’s side by side, he’s in his hip pocket. I’m getting off of that and I’m coming back to the So decision making, that’s part of the execution. Whether you run the route and like you’re talking about route rack where you where you there’s definitive stuff at the top, whether it’s, you know, Devonte Adams or whether it’s David Sills. I get to the top of my route and I get a little pressure break to create that separation versus man coverage. I’ve got that I’ve got that little idiosyncrasy that I know from a from a quarterback standpoint. I know what my guys doing from a body language standpoint. Boom. I can get the ball out. I create that separation. The difference between what you guys did in 04 and what we’re doing now is number seven ran the football out the backside of your run game. So now all of a sudden my run game goes like this. Yeah. Because seven Michael Vic is going out this way. Warrick Dunn’s going this way. Yeah. And I’m looking at it from a defensiy standpoint, I better get up field to defend the bootleg. I can’t crash the run game. What we’re seeing in on tape, if you look at it, we’re getting guys crashing the backside of the run game. Now, you’re not going to get that from Kirk, but Pennix has the ability to do those kind of things. And if Michael can be healthy, hopefully, you know, knock on wood, hopefully Mike’s ready to go this week. Um that’s almost something that you almost got to tell him, hey, you need to take that. Yeah. And and and we’re going to see a guy this weekend in Drake May. You go look at the tape of Drake May. He’s doing those. He’s taking off. Yeah. You know, and and he’s not Michael Vic, but he’s very athletic. You’ve seen it. Yeah. Michael’s gonna have to build some of that into his game where he’s aggressive that if you want to rush me and drop off, I’m gonna go get me eight. I’m gonna go get 15. I’m going to go run for a first down. Then you’re going to have to come up and try to make sure you defend me. Now all of a sudden that intermediate area comes a little bit more open. I can throw those guys open because they don’t want to give me that much room to get out. So there are some things that guys are going to have to develop their games, take their games to another level. Michael’s one of them. There’s another other guys that have to take their game to another level. This is why to me this is this is a myriad of things. Everybody wants to put their finger on one thing. Oh, the offensive coordinator is not getting his job done. So, we need to do something there. That’s not what it is. He’s culpable some point, you know, to a certain extent, and he knows that. That’s why he’s grinding over here right now trying to get stuff ready for this game. But there’s guys from an execution standpoint that have to take their game to another level. We’re kind of in that kind of that fifth grade level of the offense because we got a bunch of young dudes. They need to grow up a little bit and take their game to another level. So, one quick thing, Rex. Sorry to uh for you go. Uh I looked at you and laughed because you said something to me that you mentioned ‘ 04. I got here in ‘ 06 and I remember sitting in meeting rooms with Mike with Greg Nap, rest in peace. And there were times where that same play that you would say, “All right, here’s go. We’re running outside zone.” But Mike, if you see that backside in crashing, you pull it. You just go. I mean, it was literally said the way you just said. That’s why I laughed that Knap would literally say, “Just take it. Just do something with it.” Because guess what? We got to get that guy to respect the backside. And there would literally be times where we would work on in practice like, “Okay, we’re we’re going to the left.” And you would peek as you come out the line of scrimmage, looking at that backside end to see how sharp he is coming down that line. And if he came any flatter, it was take off and take it and run. It was go. And that was maybe four, five, six plays in the ball game where you just would take it and go because that backside in, but it gave you that respect that you needed. You say some guys have to take that in. And that’s kind of what Nap would tell Michael just, hey, look, if they not going to respect the backside, I don’t care what it is, you just pull it and go. So you can, you can go back on the tape, but you can see literally he looked back and you see that guy, he just takes off and go. He picks up eight, nine, 10 yards. Next time they go wide zone, guess what? That guy’s slow playing it. He ain’t crashing down anymore. Cut back and that that provides all that stuff as you guys know backside too. We’re getting the ball deep enough out of the pistol. One of the pro one of the reasons we’re in the pistol to run that stuff is to getting the ball deep enough where we can stretch it, hit it, cut it back. Well, I can’t cut back if the backside guy’s crashing. So, you’re exactly right, Sean. The last thing I’ll say about I I know we’re not in 2004 and there’s a lot of people listening and watching that probably like, I don’t remember that. All I remember is Michael Vic was really good and he was really fast. And that’s 100% correct. However, the last thing I’ll say and I think you guys would both agree is that that year in that time period, we ran the inside and outside zone better than anybody in a National Football League. And that was because that was all we worked on. We weren’t a man team. We weren’t pulling guards all over the place. It was inside outside zone. And if you didn’t hit your landmarks, Alex Gibbs was ripping you out of there and you weren’t playing right. But that’s what it gets back to is can you do something extremely well that the defense, no matter how they play it, you’re going to block it better, right? And that’s what the National Football League gets to is your technique and your mechanics and your fundamentals has to get so good that doesn’t matter what they do, you’re still going to be able to block it up front. Sure. All right, let’s move on. Uh because we’ve got the Patriots this week. You guys talked a little bit about this week already. Drake Mays playing at an extremely high level. Drake May’s not only playing the quarterback position well, but he’s also running the football well. Second leading rusher on the team behind Raandre Stevenson. Um, and Stefon Diggs is kind of founding his way. Remember, he’s kind of bounced around a little bit. Well, he seems to find his way in the receiver core. Kan Booty as well is having a good season. So, Arch, why don’t you give our listeners and our viewers a little bit of background of who Atlanta is going to see in New England. Yes, Atlanta needs to worry about themsel. they have to go out and they got to do their stuff better, but they’ve also got an opponent on the other side of the field. So, give people a little bit of taste of what they’re going to face in the Patriots. Well, you’re going to see uh a lot of two tight end sets. They’re going to run some tight end sets that you’d think, okay, they’re throwing the ball and they’re having success and Drake’s thrown for over 2,000 yards, 15 TDs, what, four picks, something like that, taking care of the ball. Um, but what they’re do, they their base is they want to run, they would like to run the football. You know, Tayvon Henderson, the rookie out of Ohio State, is the guy that is added in to what Rack talked about where Raandre Stevenson coming downhill. If you look at those four guys, they’ve got four guys that don’t have over 250 yards rushing. You mentioned Drake is number two. So, they want to run the football. Now, some of Drake’s stuff, most of Drake’s stuff is the impromptu. They’re not designing run plays. Now, they’ll have some bootlegs for him, both front side and backside, and he has run pass options, but most of his stuff is when he drops the throw. If you rush four and you’re not really kind of having having that mush rush scenario where you’re trying to smash the pocket on him, he’s going to get out and break you down. Um, he throws the ball to the backs, the two backs, those two guys, uh, Henderson and Stevenson, have about 40 catches between them. So, he’s throwing the ball to those guys. You mentioned Booty. He’s the guy that’s uh that’s caught the touchdowns. Uh Diggs is is blended in extremely well. He’s got two tight ends he can throw the football to. We know one of those guys, don’t we? Yeah. Yeah. Austin Hooper is is one of the other other tight ends. Hener Henry has kind of rediscovered his career a little bit uh for for this this New England team, but they play with kind of Vable’s mentality and goes back to what you’re talking about. We’re going to we’re going to we’re going to impose ourselves on you. Oh, for sure. and and certainly on the defensive side, but on the offensive side, they want to do that as well. And so, they kind of tried to get back to what they used to be when he was playing a little bit. And I I give I give their staff a ton of credit. They’re 10th 10th in total offense. They’re ninth in total defense. Uh they’re doing a really good job scoring points and keeping people off the scoreboard. Um so, all the little things that you’re hoping for from a from a complimentary football standpoint is coming together for New England. Um Shock, you talked a little bit about the stats. You mentioned scoring. Eighth in the league is a scoring offense. Fourth in the league is a scoring defense. So, a lot of times you can look at all these stats and everything and at the end of the day, you kind of need to look at how are they doing in the scoring department. And the other thing that I kind of caught me uh as interesting, shock, is I looked at how have the Patriots fared at home this year. Obviously, it’s going to be a home game Falcons traveling to play on the road. Well, they’re two-2 this year. They they lost their first two games at home in games against the Raiders and Steelers, but then they’ve won their last two games. And not only have they won the last two games, they’ve averaged 37 points a game in both of those. So, it’s not like they’ve been dominant at home throughout the course of the year, but the the sample size that we have lately is a Patriots team that’s playing well and scoring a lot of points, which poses some problems for Atlanta, which is what you want from a team that’s starting to figure out who they are. And Braves, as we mentioned, has started to put his imprint on both sides of the ball. Obviously, you knew coming in he would be a defensive-minded guy. And that side of the ball would play to that kind of standard. Last five ball games, 20 points or less that they’ve given up. So, you’re talking about not allowing people in the end zone and they’re scoring a lot of points. That puts a lot of pressure on opposing offenses to play well. We just talked about the game we’re coming off where the Miami Dolphins had the ball 38 minutes. That cannot happen in this ball game. Arch laid out the multitude of guys that could hurt you on that side of the ball from the running backs and which we’ve seen the last two weeks. Running backs be a big part of the storyline coming into the ball game. We saw a chain last week. They tried to force feed him the football similar to what the 49ers did. McCaffrey first play of the ball game. They try to throw a wheel route over there on JD Bertray. you know, coming in they’re going to try to even though these are different style of backs and Raandre and and Trayvon, they’re still going to be focal points of this of this offense when they talk about running the football. Uh on the other side of it, Drake May’s been sacked 28 times though. He’s a guy that you can get to. Uh those first two losses, nine sacks in those first two losses. Freaking Miles Garrett just last week, five sacks on his own. Yeah. So maybe this is an opportunity for you to say, “All right, 38 minutes is something you can’t have, but here’s something else that you can do. You can get out to the quarterback and get off the field.” You talked about it. You got to get off the field. You can’t be uh, you know, on offense two of 11 on third down and then allow the other team to be 50 60% on third down. You got to find ways to get off the field when he gets those impromptu plays. We got to make sure you stick to him on the back end, but also you got to you got to you got to get to him. I think that’s a big part of this ball game is getting to Drake May and understanding that he’s a guy that if we’ve seen over the last couple weeks, if a quarterback finds some confidence, he’s going to make some plays on you. So, this is a a team that’s scoring points, not allowing points, but they’re also have some some things that’s working against him, but even with the five sacks, they were able to score over 30 points against the Browns. Um, Arch, I was listening to Raheem’s press conference yesterday and it made me think about has he been in a situation where his team has been struggling and has he seen a turnaround? So, I went and I did a little bit of research and he didn’t have to go far 2023 season. So, before he ends up coming to Atlanta, the Rams started three and six that year. Okay? And if you guys remember, they finished seven and one. Okay? So, if there’s a guy that knows what it looks like midseason when a team is struggling, Raheem’s been there before now, how can he harness it now as the head coach and not as just a coordinator, but Arch, my question to you is, we take it one game at a time. Okay. But what is it going to take for Atlanta as a whole to turn this thing around to make it look somewhat like it did in 2023 when Raheem was with the Rams? Well, I think first of all, you got to rack, you got to identify what is it we’re we’re struggling with. What is it we’re doing incorrectly? How can we accentuate what we’re doing well? It’s like going into the weight room. You know, you don’t want to neglect what you do really well, but you know as well as I do, the strength and conditioning staff here or wherever in the National Football League in our experience is they’re going to work on your weaknesses. Okay, where are you weak? You’re weak when you, you know, you try to plant your light legs. We’re going to work. That’s what you’re going to have to do from a game plan standpoint is okay, they’re continuing. They always self- scout throughout the year. You guys know this. Um I think people think that okay, only on the by-week do they self scout. There’s people in the building that are getting analytics all the time that are evaluating. Okay, what are we doing? And are we giving things away? Are we are there some tells that are showing certain things certain things that they’re allowing them to pin their ear back and come after us or they know right away that that’s that something’s going to happen. So the counteracts off of that. But I to me that’s you’ve got the personnel in the building, you you’ve got the people from a knowhow standpoint coaching wise. Now we have to mel meld that together if you will and create in uncertainty on the defensive side of the football. Wait a minute. I saw that on tape and they didn’t do that. Yeah. You know, they did this. Well, yeah, we made it look like that and now we’re doing this. And I And that’s the evolution of what happens throughout every year. You know, when you play 17 games, you can’t get caught in ruts. You got to continue to kind of reinvent yourself a little bit. Um, I think that’s really kind of all it is. I think you have the talent to get that done. Arch, it’s the chess game that is the National Football League. Everybody is talented in this league, but how do you create an edge to on Sunday be just a little bit better than the opponent? All right, guys. Let’s let’s finish it up like this. I want each of us one, two, three, to give one key, one key that Atlanta has to do this weekend as they play on the road one:00 against the Patriots if they want to come away with the victory. Shock, I’m going to start with you. What is one key that you are looking forward to seeing Atlanta doing on Sunday? You know, I just talked about obviously getting Drake May on the ground. I won’t use that one. Um, I’ll say our secondary has to play well. Uh, you look at the numbers, you look at the how how they’re distributing the football. Obviously, Stefon Diggs has been big for him. Uh, Keshan Booty, Hunter Henry, M. Holland, all those guys have been focal points for Drake Mate. You take away a guy’s ability to be able to push the football down the field. You take away his ability to be able to have quick decisions and I think you have some success in this ball game. I think the secondary has to play exceptionally well in this ball game to give us a chance to get after the quarterback one. And I think we’re going to have to line up and play some man coverage, get in the guy’s face, not give them easy access throws, going to have to stand up and be a little bit different this week and change kind of the the mo of times of what you want and maybe you come out there a little bit more. That means you got to lock up on the back end. So, I think this is a big ball game for the secondary because of how much success Drake has had over the last few ball games throwing the football. Obviously, they’re going to run the football, but this is also a guy who wants to push the ball down. Remember his times in North Carolina to now, he still wants to throw the football. If we can slow that that that that receiver core down or the pass catchers, we got a good chance of of playing, I think, good football on the defense side of the ball. All right, secondary making it challenging on the passing game. All right, Arch, what do you think? One key for you. Yeah, I want to do a little value shopping if I can. We’ll do a little value shopping. I want I want I want value in the plays that I run that are going to create opportunities maybe for me later on in the game. So, no no wasted series, no wasted plays. Um I think we do we we’ve had too much of that the last couple of weeks. So, I want to be able to get something out of the first down play, something out of the second down play, keep myself in manageable situations where I can convert, but I want to do it in a in a way where the defense is still trying to figure out what I’m doing. You know, they’re going to know we want to run the football. So, I want value out of every drive. Now, we may not score on every drive, but you get two first downs, three first downs, you look over, the clock is a little bit more diminished. the defense isn’t on the field as much and we get a little bit more confidence and hey, we can do that. We got a little something here. We set this up so that’s available later on. Value, a little bit value on drives in the games. Can I add one thing for you? Give you a key, right? One thing we have to do better in this ball game, too. We can’t have the special team penalties. We had three of them in this last ball game where you’re starting drives inside your 10 yard line or starting drives inside the 20 yard. It’s hard to go metholically go down 8 n 10 12 play drives without something bad happening. So, we can’t have those pillings in special teams that already set you behind when you’re trying to go get points. Love it. Love it. You get the third phase of the game involved. And I think you’re exactly right. Just too many penalties last week backing you up and you’re starting inside your 15, your 10 yard line. Now you’re now looking at the amount of yards you got to cover just to get into scoring territory. We play the game on our show a lot of times about three words. I’m just going to give y’all two today. kind it kind of just piggybacks on you just kind of piggybacks on your thought with bringing some value is first downs. That’s it. And we always talk about third down conversions and everything like I’m not even worried about I want first downs because guess what? If we get a first down on first down, I’m cool with that. We get a first down on second down, great. Yeah. Right. But this all kind of goes together with what you were talking about. defense was being was on the field too much last week against Miami. How do you prevent that? Just get first downs. And I don’t care how they come. I don’t care if you take one because of penalty. Sustainable. It’s fine. First downs is the key in this game. When we look up, we need to see Atlanta have more first downs than the Patriots do because they’re staying on the field. And then hopefully they can turn the tides in the red zone because Atlanta’s not good in the red zone when it comes to touchdown percentages. But you get first downs, you’re in territory to score. You got to put points on the board. You’re going to have to score against the Patriots. I don’t know if you guys see this as a 14 to9 game, but I No, I you got to This is an offensive league. We’ve been really fortunate how well the defense has played here early on. I think Jeff’s done an outstanding job of melding the new guys that he’s got and they’re playing at a good level. And I know that you see 34 points on the board. Again, the offense contributed to that. So, but at some point, as Rack just said, this is an offense. This is it’s built to be an offensive league. You got to go make some plays on the offensive side of the football. First downs. So, Rack So, the four first downs we had in the first half this last week is not enough for you. That’s like That’s like Rack saying, “Okay, I got mac and cheese. Where where’s the meat?” You know, where where are my greens? I didn’t get any greens with it. What’s the deal? I got you know buttered jelly. You want a full meal? You want a full meal? I got you. So basically, you can’t walk into this thing sleepily, right? Right. No chance. Right. There’s no there’s no chance of being we got no mel no melatonin, none of that stuff. You know, you can take your pill to go over to over over to Germany if you want. You want to fly it over. None of that. Uh we asked for three, but we’re going to give you four. Okay. Secondary’s got to play well. Arch is looking for value on offense. Shock threw back in. Special teams got to play much more disciplined. It’s all good because I added it to the list cuz got and then I’m talking about first downs in this game. So there’s your four keys. We thought it was going to be three, but we gave you four anyway. Okay, next one next week. Let’s score it up. Let’s take a look next week. And did those four things happen for Atlanta? And if they did, did they win? Did they lose? Or if it didn’t happen, maybe that’s the reason. Let’s go. Come on. Bring us back. Arch, it’s on you. Bring us back a dub. It’s on me. It’s on me. It’s on you. It’s on me. I don’t know what you got to say on the plane. 1:00 Sunday afternoon, Falcons at Patriots looking to get back on track. That’s going to rack it. Uh that’s going to wrap things up here on the Falcons Audible presented by AT&T. That’s DJ Shock. Rack it up. You can rack it up. You can rack it up. Put it on the rack. You know, rack it up. Hey, we’ll see you next week. We owe these guys. Let’s go to New England. Get some. Rack it up.

Derek, Dave, and DJ react to the Atlanta Falcons’ 34-10 loss to the Miami Dolphins. They break down what led to the loss, including the absence of injured starters, problems in the run game, and more. They then talk about what to expect from the Patriots next Sunday and wrap it up with keys on how to leave New England with a win.

0:00 – Intro
2:52 – What caused the 360 turnaround?
9:30 – Injuries impact & execution issues
25:02 – Moving on to New England
31:22 – Returning to the win column
33:24 – Keys to a Falcons WIN!

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