The Falcoholic
James Pearce’s name continued popping up, the short passing game was efficient, and the defense got the better of the offense in the red zone portion on Day 5 of camp.
I’m going to give an immediate disclaimer from the top that my view for a good portion of 11-on-11s today was obstructed. When the scrimmage portion kicked off, they were on the far field, with the players on the sideline lined up between the media/fans and where the practice was taking place. We were shown the latter portion of practice clearly, at least.
As a result, I will not share any exact completion numbers from the quarterbacks, as has become customary. I do have the tally tracked as best as I could today, but I’m just not confident enough that it’s fully accurate to be able to publish it.
This was nonetheless another strong day in pads, with weather that was fully cooperative and some real cloud cover for the first time since camp began.
Let’s get right into it with my observations from Day 5 of Falcons Training Camp!
Penix hit on the majority of his completions today, and a lot of them were of the short variety. For any other quarterback having so many short completions wouldn’t be the most inspiring phenomena, but when it comes to Penix (whom we know is going to hit on those deep shots) it’s just what you wanted to see.
That’s not to say that he didn’t connect on a couple of deep shots, particular to WR Drake London, who had a one on one snag deep down the sideline on a wheel route, then beat CB A.J. Terrell on an underthrown shot that he adjusted perfectly to get.
It wasn’t all great for Penix, however, as he had a poor performance when the team entered the red zone. First, toward the end of the 2-minute drill portion, Penix (from inside the 20) threw the first interception of camp on an underthrown end zone pass intended for London which CB Natrone Brooks got into position for and came down with. Later on, inside the 10-yard-line, Penix overthrew both WR Ray Ray McCloud (who was open) and London to wind up going 0-3 in the red zone as far as I could see.
This continues shedding light on Penix’s main issue, which are those shorter to intermediate touch passes that scouts had concerns with coming out of the draft. We are still early in camp, and I will note that he did have a touchdown pass to WR KhaDarel Hodge from a bit further out on a laser beam throw, earlier in practice.
Standout rookie OLB James Pearce Jr. continued his strong work at camp. He also got a lot of rotation in with the first team, after running almost exclusively with the second team the past...
