FanPost

PFF Grading the Game: Week 8 Atlanta vs. Detroit (@London)

I am tossing in the towel on the season. I have seen time and time again this regime where we build a 20+ point lead and manage to just absolutely bumble it like they are actively trying to lose. I am tired of it. That being said and because I apparently enjoy torture I will continue to support the players on this team and cheer them on. I just don't believe this coaching staff or even this GM will be able to correct the issues posed to the team. It is time for some new eyes. I have extreme respect for Mike Smith and what he has done for the franchise has been great but it appears he has done all he can.

Summary:

None too surprising we are bottom of the league in most categories so far this season. While we haven't hit full red yet we are extremely close and its just a matter of time till we see what will be scores close to last season if not worse in some areas.

Rankings:

Last week:

Overall (Offense): 25th
Pass: 9th
Rush: 23rd
Pass Block: 19th
Run Block: 31st
Penalty (Offense): 27th
Overall (Defense): 26th
Run Def: 19th
Pass Rush: 27th
Pass Cov: 27th
Penalty (Defense): 3rd
Special Teams: 11th

This Week:

Overall (Offense): 24th
Pass: 9th Pass: 9th
Rush: 23rd
Pass Block: 17th
Run Block: 29th
Penalty (Offense): 29th
Overall (Defense): 28th
Run Def: 19th
Pass Rush: 30th
Pass Cov: 30th
Penalty (Defense): 3rd
Special Teams: 13th

Our blocking has improved since last week thanks to a much improved week from Jake Matthews as well as Blalock returning to his dominant form. We improved in both pass and run blocking rankings which is encouraging. Disappointing however is we continue to drop in offensive penalties to the point that we are now third worst in the league in this category but at the same time we are not committing any penalties on defense and rank 3rd in defensive penalties for a second straight week. Our pass coverage and pass rush rankings dropped no thanks to dropping more linebackers in coverage that shouldn't be in coverage as well as Ishmael having a bad week. Pass rush saw Osi return to his Giants form and give Stafford a lot of grief all day but he was sadly the only one giving it in spade. And what about this talk about the NFC being bad and us making the playoffs?

Yup that pretty much throws that possibility out the window. FO now gives us a 10.8% total chance to make the postseason. and that's all thanks to a 10.7% at winning the division. FO also expects us to win a total of 6 games. I would say that is generous honestly. Its at this point at the season that I basically don't want us to win another game. Every game from here on out only ruins our draft picks and lets be honest with this roster we need as much talent as possible. Running out UDFA starting linebackers every week isn't going to win us a Super Bowl. I don't want the team to lose though for the sake of the players and thus like last year I am in limbo. I really hope the coaching staff starts getting the young players a lot more time to help them out and doing anything else especially trotting out players that will not be with us next year only hurts the team.

To be specific however FO predicts us for 3.7 additional wins and graciously bumped that up to 4 above to go with our 2 wins versus the bad Saints and the bad Bucs. Also standing out in this is the fact that FO says we have played the 27th easiest schedule so far. That hurts seeing as how we only have two wins. How about the rest of the season? Again the 27th easiest schedule going forward. This amounts to them predicting us to go 4-4 the rest of the season versus Carolina twice, New Orleans, Tampa, Cleveland, Arizona, Pittsburgh, and Green Bay. I cannot honestly say we can win 4 of those games other than Carolina once, New Orleans, Tampa and Cleveland. If I am being realistic, I only see Tampa and maybe Carolina as a win at this point. That is how low we have fallen where I don't even predict us to beat the Browns.

We have officially hit rock bottom with our defense and are now the worst rated defense by FO. As painful as it is to see, it is none too surprising considering the product we continue to trot out there.

Offense:

This week we did see a lot of improvements on offense in certain regards. Jake definitely improved since last week and while he is still in the red it looks like he may be recovering from his ankle injury and the bye week will certainly help him out more. Blalock had a great game and especially in Run Blocking which PFF repeatedly seems to gig the Falcons for. Toilolo also had some big catches and also screen blocked well which garnered him a green score. Steven Jackson continues to produce good numbers and showed streaks of his St. Louis self this week. The Oline however outside of Blalock and even Schraeder was shaky and provided some red blocking scores.

Anybody that says Matt Ryan is the issue of this offense is delusional and is grasping at straws. Was that the worst pass I have ever seen by Matt Ryan that led to the Interception Return for TD? Probably. Should that one play encapsulate Matt Ryans career? Absolutely Not. If one were to ask me what play I think of when I think of Matt Ryan it would be the 59 yard pass to Roddy when we beat Carolina in 2012 with 5 seconds left. That is what makes Matt Ryan amazing. The ability to basically turn a game completely around when needed in crunch time. What limits Matt however is when he is told to slow down and not lead the offense. We have seen him do much better in hurry up no huddle situations but those have basically be nonexistent this season. Anywho I shall have more on Matt Ryan next week as I plan on writing an extensive Matt Ryan piece during the bye week and for a teaser here is some interesting data to show maybe why Matt has had it so hard this season:

What I did in this chart was to take PFF time to throw metric and take the delta between Sack and Throw as well as the delta between sack and attempt and then sorted by Delta (Sack to Throw) and then Delta (Sack to Attempt). What this tells us is that Matt has basically a 0.16 second difference between the time he has to throw and the time in which he gets sacked. That is about the narrowest window you can have. Whats even crazier is that Matt Ryan has half the time between Sack To Throw than his closest competition. That is absurd. Whats even crazier is that he has about 10% the difference in time Joe Flacco has. Take this as you will but it basically shows how bad our OLine has been with the injuries and the talent we have. This line still needs some work but those injuries are really hindering Matt's chances to make a difference.

Snaps are about the same with only Carimi being replaced for Schraeder at starting RT. Devonta saw his lowest percentage of snaps since week 1. Steven Jackson also saw a severe drop in his percentage of snaps while those were spread between Quizz and Antone as well as Patrick DiMarco whose snap percentage skyrocketed this past week. Harry Douglas being back means less snaps for the other receivers and all of them saw less percentage of plays as a result. Its obvious Koetter is tweaking things on the offensive side and in the first half it paid off. Second half was a different story.

Offense is staying about the same in FO which I tend to agree with.

Defense:

This week showed Osi being the true pass rusher he is. He was constantly disrupting plays and getting his hands in the face of Matt Stafford and was truly the only force on offense this week. Tyson Jackson also had some surprisingly good pass rushing and it was also shown in his grade. Corey Peters, Joplo and Ra'Shede were our main run stoppers on the day and its especially encouraging that Ra'Shede appears to be improving and looks like he is becoming more comfortable out there. As I stated earlier, Joplo, Paul and Kemal all had coverage issues this week which Kemal was the biggest surprise of these and while I believe this was just a bad game for him, one hopes he will improve on his communication and coverage and provide quality backup in the future for Willy Mo. Goodman received a large number of snaps this week and largely under performed with them but like Dave has said before its good for the young guys to get snaps.

This graph continues to look the same week after week and will probably continue to be that way.

On the snap side, Goodman saw the largest increase in snap percentage jumping from 43% to 80%. It appears these came extensively from Kroy and Massaquoi who for some reason dropped from 76% last week to 49% this week. I'm honestly done trying to figure out Nolan and Smiths reasoning for defensive snaps. Its frustrating that we are not putting our best players out on the field for the most amount of time and until this regime changes to give the best players the ball and the rookies a chance to make a difference we will continue to lose. Also, Prince Shembo again had minimum snaps at 4%... IF HE ISN'T HURT, PLAY HIM! IF HE IS HURT, BENCH HIM! This will continue to be the most bewildering thing the coaches do. Bartu is worse than Shembo. Bartu gets 52% of the snaps with the other 44% disappearing multiple times when we only play one ILB. No wonder we cant stop the run when we only trot one ILB out there... I'm tired of beating this dead horse but until this team shows they will make a difference we will continue to lose.

Now to make you feel even worse we are now the worst rated defense by FO. Joy. It is not surprising but after all the changes seeing us being so bad at stopping the run and in coverage its just hard to swallow but this is where we are at. 2012 was apparently the fluke year. We are a bad team.

As I said above, be prepared for a bye week write up on Matty Ice where I prove that he is indeed an Elite QB and in rightful company with the Top 5 QBs in the league despite what many pundits say. It should be a bright spot in a season filled with dread. Have a nice weekends Falcons fans as this may be the last weekend we have in a while when the Falcons arent losing!

<em>This FanPost was written by one of The Falcoholic's talented readers. It does not necessarily reflect the views of The Falcoholic.</em>