UPDATE: The first (of hopefully many) videos for the Anatomy of a Play series will start tomorrow. I am working on it as you read this. I've encountered a ton of road bumps, but this will happen, so help me God. Also, I haven't actually recorded any video yet, and I can tell you that I'm going to have to watch this one 10 second play about 50 times to get every angle of it. That being said, I can't wait to see what you guys think! :)

Read this article first, then come back and think to yourself, "What does that have to do with the Saints or Packers?"

Obviously, it doesn't, but that's not the point. There's a little bit of...how shall we say, roundabout thinking in here, but hopefully I'll be able to deliver the message I have in my head.

The play in question was that ~40 yard pass to Manningham where Belichick basically said the plan was, "Take away Cruz/Nicks. Make them throw it to Manningham/Pascoe."

Now, how does that apply to NO and GB? Well, it's simple. The game plan, as it should always be, is to take away their top targets and force throws to their other targets. Forcing throws to other targets means that the QB takes a little longer to make a decision (since he has to progress through his reads).

For most teams, this means throwing to their #3 or #4 target, which is oftentimes not on the same level as the first two.

But the real question is "What do you do when #3 and #4 (and in GB/NO's case, #5) are also really good?"

In most offenses (if not all of them) the TE is usually not the first read, unless the play calls for it specifically. If your TE (or 3rd option) is better than the defense's third option, then they'll be open most of the time, which is what makes them look so good at times.

What do you do as a defense if all 5 options are a bona fide receiving threat? It's sensible, but not practical (due to the sheer amount of money it would cost), to have 5 equally talented defensive backs covering the 5 options (or 4 DBs and 1 Spoon).

So what would you do in that situation? Are we just doomed forever? Should we try to force turnovers? What's your move?

Please forgive the outages today.

As a token of my appreciation for fighting through them, here's a discussion post. You guys and girls love those, right?

It's a pretty simple question I'm posing. Will the Atlanta Falcons draft to fill needs—say left tackle, defensive end, backup quarterback—or will they go for the best player available? Previous drafts under the current brain trust have been built more around filling need than pure BPA, but I think that may change a bit in 2012. You're welcome to disagree.

I recognize, as many said when I posed this question on Twitter last night, that there's a lot of off-season still to come before we hit the draft, and that could significantly change things. Factor what you assume will be the outcome of free agency into your comments, if you would, and we'll go from there.

Enjoy.

UPDATE: The Anatomy of a Play series will start next Monday. I still have a couple things to iron out on my end, but it is coming and it should be fun, so long as I can juggle it and school. Should be fine. The first week or so might be kinda sloppy but it's all a learning process. I also want to start it at the beginning of a week, so that's also part of why.

I've said this a few times before, but I felt like, despite our sorry performance against the Giants, that they weren't that much better than us. The only real area where I feel like they soundly beat us talent-wise is defensive line (and maybe the OL, too, reinforcing my dad's theory that all games are won with whose lines play the best), which is probably a big part of why our team has its struggles on third down.

Their WR corps is pretty good, but if we would utilize ours, ours should be just as good. Eli has proven himself to be a fine quarterback, but there's not anything he can do that Matty can't do. That right there should be a positive in many Falcons' fans minds. For so long we asked, "Do we need a Peyton to win a Super Bowl?" which had responses such as "No, we just need an Eli." And there you have it folks. Eli just won a Super Bowl.

Yeah, parts of our team need a little work, and with a new coaching staff, there's no telling what kind of surprises we'll get. I have a class with a 49ers fan and he said that when he heard we hired Mike Nolan as DC, he became very sad since Mike Nolan is a boss and it's not like the 49ers need any more competition in the playoffs.

But it's funny that the Giants of all teams won the Super Bowl. All we heard all year long was how great all these super offenses were, and guess what? Defense won the Super Bowl. Defense beat the Saints and the Packers and the Patriots in the playoffs. (And us.)

Our D isn't that bad. Yeah, we had some bad games, but it's not like the offense was playing catch-up all the time. (If only because they were incapable of playing catch-up this year, but that problem went to JAX) We just need to follow the blueprint of the Giants and get stacked on the defensive line, with serviceable LBs (ours are better, but I'm biased) and a decent secondary, and we'll be set. Our offense should be better next season with the addition of the "Four Verticals" offense of Dirk Koetter, and of course Mike Nolan is a boss.

What does it all mean? It means we're close. Close isn't close enough, but if these new coaches do what they were brought in to do, close might turn into victory.

The big game is one day away.

The question this afternoon is, how do you plan to spend it? Heading to a party? Sitting at home with some moonshine and a dream?

Wile away the afternoon talking Super Bowl.

This is not a "YOU'RE ALL DUMB" post (I don't do that) but I am curious as to why some of you think Michael Turner should be the MVP of the team. Personally, I disagree with him being the MVP BUT it has been made clear by many of you that Michael Turner should at least receive some consideration for that and some have also declared him the MVP of the team.

So this is your soapbox to explain why you think Michael Turner is the MVP (Or offensive player of the year, if Spoon or someone else is your MVP).

We passed 115 times more on first down than we ran, for anyone who's wondering.

I feel like an MVP rusher should have something that stands out. Some quality. Look at MJD this year. THAT is an MVP rusher. That team would have been nothing without him. But without Turner, would we falter? Perhaps a little, but the dropoff would be much greater without Matt Ryan. Snelling and Quizz do get a lot of reps and they can both play ball. MJD does it all for the Jags. He had nearly 2,000 scrimmage yards this year, and I can tell you from watching us that he wasn't stopped after one yard. EVER.

Perhaps if we relied on Turner more, then yes, he could be considered our MVP, but because of where Matty is at this point in his career, we don't have to lean on him as much because Matt has become more valuable to the offense. 2008 Turner was absolutely the MVP of the offense. He ran for infinite yards and helped our fledgling Matty grow into his own.

Fast forward to now, where Turner has slowed down, and he's not as valuable to the offense because there has been a changing of the guard, or a shift in value.

But that's just my opinion. You're welcome to offer your opinion here.

Hey guys, I just wanted to let you all know what I'm going to be doing in the upcoming weeks.

As we all know, the offseason is often devoid of content to talk about, and it makes for a boring time and, in the "business" aspect of it, there are fewer readers or people who just forget to visit here because there isn't anything really interesting going on.

I have long wished to have access to film, and, while I still don't have any film, I will be perusing the Internet to find some plays and break them down to determine what worked and what didn't.

Each week, I will be doing each week of the regular season. That's about 4 months worth of content which I hope you all will find interesting. I will be doing at least 4 plays per game, and I will try to balance the good and the bad plays. I'll also note that offense and defensive good/bad plays probably will not be balanced. It'll be kind of a week-by-week thing.

I'm not a football genius, but I will attempt to explain why certain plays were run the way they were and perhaps explain also why the coordinators made the right or wrong decision.

I think this will be a fun project, but I also want your input on one thing: Would you rather I do a big write-up for each play, or would you rather me do a video, where you actually hear me talk and break down the play on my computer screen? For those of you that have no heard my voice, it is not obnoxious. It's a broadcasting voice. I have heard umpteen infinity people tell me that already.

Both the write-up and the video will use some form of drawing to illustrate what's happening on the field so you can get a better idea of what happens without rewinding the video a million times like I'll probably be doing.

I don't think I can legally put the NFL video in the post, but I will provide a link to the video (wherever it comes from) on the post so you'll have easy access to it. Hopefully I've covered all my bases and won't get in trouble for this. Ha.

I'll also put a poll up so I know which of the two options to do.

Note that this is not to say Mike Smith is necessarily a "soft" coach, but are his methods softer than they should be. You can be hard and still be soft. (......wait, that doesn't sound right.)

In any case, I read this article by Jackie MacMullan over at ESPN, and it really got me thinking: Is our coach not holding players accountable enough? I recommend you take a look at the ESPN article. It provides insight as to how Bill Belichick coaches and, personally, I consider him the best head coach in the business right now. He gets the most out of his players, especially players like Julian Edelman, a former QB who now plays both sides of the ball. That's freakin' ridiculous!

But the thing that interested me was how he held his players responsible. He humiliates them, and you know what? I think that's a fantastic tactic. Roddy had drop after drop after drop this year, and it certainly would explain why it didn't get any better, if Smitty wasn't holding him accountable enough. He's a fantastic coach, but he might be suffering a bit from a "Let them do their thing" syndrome. We didn't really see our quality of play increase once it started decreasing, leading to an abysmal offensive effort in the playoffs.

Not all players had an issue with their quality of play, but in some cases, the lower quality of play didn't really improve, either.

What are your thoughts on the matter? I don't think we have any bad players/coaches or what have you, but I think some bad habits may have formed over the course of the season that either weren't fixed or weren't noticed or something.

Quick discussion post for you all this evening. As many of you know, a new stadium is all but agreed upon, and the Dome will, unfortunately, eventually no longer be the home of the Falcons. That being said, what would a new outdoor stadium do for the team? I've had discussions about this before, saying that an outdoor stadium would be great for the team, if only because I feel like the Dome is too inviting for opposing fans. Part of that could be due to the flustercuck of traffic in ATL, etc. etc. or the ease of access to the Dome via MARTA, which has a station at the ATL airport. I don't know how easy it is to reach other teams' facilities from their airport, but ATL has to have one of the easiest.

So what would you do with a new stadium? Would you make it a dome? Would you make it open-air? Where would you have the stadium built?

Personally, I'd like a stadium like (Qwest Field. I don't know the actual name now) the Seahawks stadium. It's open-air, but it's built to make noise get directed at the field, which makes it louder. We could have a gimmicky something-or-other like the Tampa Bay boat that shoots the cannons, but I don't want a retractable roof. We'd just have it closed all the time and that's lame.

When we score a touchdown, we should have a giant Falcon fly over the field with fireworks and explosions and a thing that says, "HEY OTHER TEAM, YOU FAIL" and then call it a day.

I'm kidding on that "hey, you fail" thing, by the way.