Falcons And Dolphins Recap: The Defense Means Business

Miami wasn’t showing anything on offense either. The Dolphins were being very very vanilla. Much easier to defend a team that is not going to change it up on you that much. I’m not getting to impressed by our defense, Remember last year? 1st game played the fins, held them to less than 10 points with their TD coming in the last minutes of the game. Man we thought we had a fast , good defense then too!! look what happened – THEY WEREN’T GOOD!!
 Matty Ice was awful tonight. he was missing a lot of throws, like his timing was off with his receivers – makes me wonder this though – could the timing have been off because this was the falcons first game on natural grass, so then the receivers weren’t running their routes as precise as they have been back at the dome the last 2 weeks???? For those of you that have played football and played on both surfaces, you know there is a difference between the two when identifying yard markers and sidelines to run your routes. Maybe I’m just trying to damn hard to find an excuse for matty and his receivers tonight!! LOL
 So basically I’m not going to get too worked up about our defense yet, wait till after the 1st game!! LOL And I’m not putting too much stock into the bad showing by our QB either. But dammit there is one thing I know for sure – MATT BRYANT FREAKING SUCKS!!!!! WE NEED ANOTHER PLACEKICKER ON THIS TEAM BAD!!

Thanx for reading

so you do it again. he is saying enjoy the game, everything is out of our control and before we say anything on this blog im sure the atl coaching staff has already had it ring through their head five times before it hits the blogs. so lets try n stay positive, i think some of us are syking (spelling?) each other out. have fun the falcons are gonna be good

as much as we (or some of us) might malign the offense, we’re not designed to be a 35 ppg machine; when we’re “on” we’re grinding it out with a stable of running backs behind a nasty OL, wearing out defenses & setting up the occasional play action pass. As much as I hate to say it, I think we’re really missing Jenkins right now; for all his short-comings, he definitely serves a purpose, and if he’s giving us 4-5 catches a game he’s doing his job, IMO. I think he would’ve made that catch Finn missed just because of the extra step he has.

Unfortunately, for the type of offense we are, the type of team we are, the kicking game is HYPER-critical. Does anyone happen to know if any teams still have two good (or at least serviceable) kickers in camp? Is that what we’re waiting on? Hell, can Mort still hit from 30-40? Isn’t he hangin in the ATL these days? (That IS a joke guys. . . for the most part)

looking back at his stats last year I’m not sure he would be an improvement. Was he injured last year, anyone know? He went from 88% in 2008 to 66% in 2009. Ugh- that’s the kind of stats what I’m afraid of seeing w/ Bryant

Roddy White: 6 Catches, 12 Targets

Harry Douglas: 4 Catches, 4 Targets

Tony Gonzalez: 3 Catches, 7 Targets

and for the ’Phins….

Brandon Marshall: 3 Catches, 8 Targets

Anthony Fasano: 1 Catch, 5 Targets

Ricky Williams: 5 Catches, 6 Targets

Now what does all this mean?

First and foremost, HD took passes from both Ryan and Redman last night. (I’m still so unbelievably happy I was able to see the game, I’ve been football starved!)

Some of Roddy’s fails were from good defense. Vontae Davis is no joke, however there were some stupid drops on Roddy’s part. Still, 12 targets is a rather large number considering the second most targeted person was Gonzo with 7 targets.

What that tells me is that our #1 guy was relatively locked down, as was our TE. That’s good for the ‘Phins. They were doing their job. However, HD’s perfect catch/target rate suggests that not only was he open for those catches, he was probably open all night long. Don’t forget that we’re without our #2 receiver, Mike “Peterson Stone Hands” Jenkins.

Having our true #2 out there will most definitely open the way for HD, as well as relieve some of the double coverage that Gonzo and Roddy have been seeing, else HD will burn them all night long. That’s assuming Matty Snowballs is an intelligent man who also sees what we’ve seen.

For the ‘Phins, I have to say that Brandon Marshall was a non-factor. He had some long gains, but you can’t realistically expect him not to have a few. He’s an All-Pro level receiver, after all. His longest gain was for 26 yards, so it’s not like his “long gains” were major gashes of 40+ yards. Ricky Williams was pretty dangerous out of the backfield, though I honestly believe he’s a special player, stupid moments not included. And Fasano, their TE, was also a non-factor.

Now, what does that say for us? Well, if any of you witnessed the game, you saw that there were some heroic defensive efforts out there. I have to applaud Chevis Jackson’s effort. He was sacrificing himself to get fingertips on the ball. He did get owned on one play, but I think that happens to everyone at some point. His was just last night.

To my knowledge, Chris Owens was called upon to cover Brandon Marshall last, and the rumblings around the Atlanta media is that Chris Owens may have earned his spot across from Dunta. I don’t think we didn’t see this coming, but it’s definitely good for him to play well enough to establish his position before the season’s beginning.

Also, the TE lockdown suggests good LB coverage, which is something we were having fits with last year.

I will reiterate that the offense will get better in time. I think the offense is easier to fix because the offense runs pre-set routes. Throws can be changed, routes can be changed, and better decisions can also be made. Defenses can change alignments, but it’s much harder to react to an offense’s movements and reactions like that are usually not changeable. Once Matty gets all his weapons back, I think he’ll spread the ball around a bit more.

Now, if the season would just get here!

Agree Matty looked miserably average and that’s putting it nicely. Overthrows, underthrows, throws into coverage etc,etc. I will admit after last seasons step back im a little concerned. W/ the weapons we have we should have no Problem putting up 24-28 points a game, but that remains to be seen. Bigger concern to me is our blitz packages. We had two sacks and a handful of qb pressures but again our inability to get thru on the blitz concerns me. We send 5-7 guys on their 5-6 blockers yet we still fail to generate good pressure. The qb still has his 3-5 seconds to find someone.this is something that has bothered me for years w/this team. Unless someone is going in untouched on the blitz the qb has all day to pick apart our man coverage. Sorry to be so negative after a win but hey, I am actually expecting something good from them now(?!?). What a weird feeling!

My line of thinking on our offense is obviously different than some of you. I was quite pleased to see our first team get their first TD in preseason last night. I was also a little distraught for a while about the rest of their performance, until I had this realization.

I know we were told that they prepared for the game like a real regular season game. I am thinking the offensive side of the ball still had an evaluation agenda.

My thoughts are after watching now 3 preseason games is this: The first two were for evaluating the running game with the 1st team, along with giving some of the rookies time with the 1st team. Last night to me seemed an evaluation of the long ball (or at least Ryan/Roddy timing). We learned that Matty Ice and TG were fine in the first two. So, why keep pressing it. HD needed a few targets as well, and got them.

we have FIVE coaches that have been on the dolphins staff in the last 5 years. I just think we know them very well and matchup well with them. Remember last seasons opener versus the fins?? We held them to less than 10 points with their TD coming in the last few minutes of the game. We all thought then, “we got a very good defense this year- see what they did to the dolphins?” But, low and behold, NO defense for you!! Our D sucked last year. So I’m NOT putting too much stock into this ONE pre-season game to be convinced our defense is anything but a work in progress STILL!!!!!!
 Lets see how we match up to a very physical Steelers team – do we get pushed around at the line of scrimmage or do we hold our own, or maybe even, WE dominate at the line. We shall see.
Thanx for readin’

Houston gets a fumble recovery for a TD and still sucks.