The Falcoholic
The Atlanta Falcons welcomed the Tennessee Titans to Flowery Branch for a joint practice for the first time in many years on Tuesday. When we walked out onto the field blanketed by the mid-August cloud cover, we were greeted with the sights of an opposing team on the field, having made the trek down from Nashville.
This was the first day of the highly anticipated joint practice with the Titans, as Tennessee reporters and even a few fans made the trip to observe the days events.
For the Falcons players who did not play in the first preseason game (which was the majority of starters), this was their first chance to compete against someone not on their own team since the beginning of camp.
Here are my notes and observations from the first day of the joint practice.
If Michael Penix really does take the league by storm this year, then the Tennessee Titans will have been the first team to experience it first hand.
Penix went 13-16 overall in the 11-on-11 portions of scrimmage against Tennessee’s first team defense. He went 4-5 in the early 7-on-7 portion to begin the day (this setting always favors the offense with no pass rush at all, however). I counted six of those 13 completions as being intermediate to deep (at least 10 yards beyond the line of scrimmage in the air).
The best pass of the day was a looping home run shot to Casey Washington on the second throw of 11s after Washington got a step on a post route. It was a majestic deep ball which hit him right on the money.
In the 7-on-7 portion, Penix also connected with Bijan Robinson on a wheel route for a touchdown, where Bijan easily got multiple steps ahead of a helpless Cedric Gray.
The second year man wasn’t afraid of pushing the ball downfield, to consistent success. Tennessee’s secondary without L’Jarius Sneed had no answer.
Speaking of no answers in the secondary, Drake London was simply too much for whatever the Titans threw at him. Out of Penix’s 21 total throws in both 7s and 11s, eight were directed at London for a 38% target share. London is clearly the favorite at this junction, and that seems unlikely to change.
Out of those eight, six were completions and five of them would have gone for 10+ yard gains. Penix kept dialing up his top guy down the field on those intermediate chunk plays which lie somewhere between short passes and complete home runs.
At one point, after hitting a very nice gain to London on two out of three plays, it looked like Tennessee sent a double team against the USC product. That didn’t seem to help, as Penix hit London for another chunk play on a perfectly executed timing route on the right sideline.
Kyle Pitts continues to miss big portions of 11-on-11 drills and Darnell Mooney is still hurt,...
