The Falcoholic
The Atlanta Falcons like things to go smoothly, but when they don’t, they often struggle to look like a competent NFL team. Faced with a well-coached 49ers team that was intent on taking away the run, rattling Michael Penix Jr., and running the ball down Atlanta’s throats, the Falcons appeared to be daydreaming about a Buffalo Bills Monday night football game where everything went just the way they wanted it to. By the time they woke up, the game was lost.
I don’t mean to put this over-dramatically, but if you don’t look at it in that prism, the game plan made zero sense. The Falcons couldn’t get those deep sideline shots going on a consistent basis, but they didn’t adapt to that by consistently targeting their running backs out of the backfield and working the middle of the field, trying to get the ball out of Michael Penix Jr.‘s hands quickly and relying on an athletic set of blockers to create space to work. Instead, they shied away from the run early and were forced to shy away from it late, relying on passing plays that developed too slowly for a rattled Penix working behind an offensive line that couldn’t give him time to work. Penix seemed to want to live on the sidelines, the team seemed to want to oblige, and The result? Just 10 points, six of those predictably coming on a Bijan Robinson touch, in the form of a screen pass. Execution ensured the plan in place had no chance of working, but once it became evident how San Francisco was going to try to stymie this offense, the Falcons simply let it happen.
There was no way the Falcons were going to win this game scoring ten points, so what the defense did almost seems like an afterthought. But again, Atlanta wanted to be the team that consistently put pressure on Mac Jones and forced him into mistakes, and that worked for a while. When San Francisco essentially abandoned the pass and the Falcons lost Divine Deablo, forcing them to rely on JD Bertrand at inside linebacker, their run defense was sorely tested. They failed that test utterly, something I feared all season long and was largely spared from, but Kyle Shanahan is simply too smart to put the game on Mac Jones’ arm when he doesn’t have to. Instead, Christian McCaffrey ran for 129 yards and two touchdowns on 24 carries, and Mac Jones went a pedestrian 17/26 for 152 yards and an interception. The Falcons pass defense held up yet again, but it was partly because it was not tested that heavily.
None of this factors in the Falcons running a 4th and 1 sideline pass play with no Bijan Robinson in the game and out of shotgun, allowing a 3rd and 13 conversion with only 10 players on the field, getting called for 12 men on the field, or picking up yet another delay of game, all of which should have this...
