Black Andy Dwyer
ATL
Coach Q is a DMX fan
9:41 - 9:46
No one can convince me that Matt Ryan isn't an elite QB anymore. The way he takes command of the huddle is amazing. And all his teammates have so much respect for him.
Preserve The Iceberg, Don't Let Matty Ice Melt: The Official 2016 Atlanta Falcons Season Thread
- Thread starter Nostalgic
- Start date
No one can convince me that Matt Ryan isn't an elite QB anymore. The way he takes command of the huddle is amazing. And all his teammates have so much respect for him.
AVXL
Laughing at you n*ggaz like “ha ha ha”
#RiseUp #TruetoAtlanta #Brothership collabo
AVXL
Laughing at you n*ggaz like “ha ha ha”
During the Falcons 6 game win streak, Atlanta is out scoring opponents by 19.7 ppg
ATL is giving up less than 20 ppg during the 6 game win streak
ATL is giving up less than 20 ppg during the 6 game win streak
AVXL
Laughing at you n*ggaz like “ha ha ha”
Falcons have to get after Brady, preferrably without blitzing
19
5:02 p.m Friday, Jan. 27, 2017 Atlanta Falcons
- Matt Winkeljohn
For the AJC
FALCONS
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FLOWERY BRANCH
There will next weekend be this not-so-small matter of the Falcons getting after Tom Brady, one of the better quarterbacks in NFL history and a lock to carve you up if he has time to do it.
The question: How do the Falcons mount a big rush?
The fabulous signal-caller will play in his seventh Super Bowl on Feb. 5 in Houston, where the Falcons will be gunning for results akin to those achieved by the Giants in his fourth and fifth big games, which New England lost.
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When New York upset the undefeated Patriots after the 2007 season, the Giants pressured Brady on 43 percent of his drop-backs and sacked him five times with a modest blitz package.
They sent an extra rusher or two 23 percent of the time, relying chiefly on a stout front four that included NFL single-season sack leader Michael Strahan (one sack) on one end, and Justin Tuck (seven pressures, two sacks) on the other.
In the Giants’ win over New England after the 2011 season, they dialed back on the blitzing, sending it just 12 percent of the time, yet still managed a much-more important 47 percent pressure rate. Tuck had nine pressures and two sacks.
On the Broncos’ way to last year’s Super Bowl title, they pressured Brady 49 percent of the time with four sacks, pounding him despite blitzing just 16 percent of the time in the AFC Championship game.
“Playing against any quarterback no matter what time of year it is when you can affect him with a four-man rush, it’s absolutely pivotal for your defense,” said Falcons defensive end/tackle Tyson Jackson, who sacked Green Bay’s Aaron Rodgers in Sunday’s NFC Championship game win.
“You can drop more in coverage, you can disguise if you can constantly get pressure with your front four.”
There’s no debating that.
Falcons outside linebacker Vic Beasley Jr. led the NFL in regular-season sacks with 15.5, but the Falcons don’t have the pedigree of multiple fantastic pass-rushers, as the Broncos did last season.
The Falcons blitzed only 16.5 percent of the time in winning its final four regular-season games, with a 27.2 percent pressure rate, according to Pro Football Focus.
The Falcons’ strength of opponents, and improvements in the play of a young secondary up front all factored to help them succeed while calling fewer dogs.
Over the first 12 games, the Falcons blitzed 21.4 percent of the time for a pressure rate of 32.8. The blitz helped the pressure rate, but compromised coverage as opposing quarterbacks completed 67.8 percent of their passes in that time as opposed to 55.8 percent over the final four games.
“Getting pressure on Brady is important, just as important as any other quarterback,” defensive tackle Grady Jarrett said. “Definitely, having success with four guys would make it better. However you get there, you have to try to get pressure.”
The Falcons blitzed Seattle quarterback Russell Wilson a mere eight percent of the time in the divisional round of the playoffs, yet pressured him on 16 of 39 qualifying drop-backs. That was fantastic.
So why did Smith and Quinn send so much extra help after Rodgers a week later, blitzing him 33 percent of the time.
Probably because Pro Football Focus ranked Green Bay the No. 1 pass-protection unit in the NFL in the regular season, whereas Seattle’s offensive line is young and, frankly, not good.
One way or another, the Falcons had to get after Rodgers, and they did, pressuring him 41 percent of the time on the way to a 44-21 victory.
Nickel back Brian Poole blasted Rodgers twice on blitzes last week, each time expediting throws. One went incomplete and another gained nothing.
“I was excited (about the calls),” he said this week. “I was happy that coach was aggressive. Just don’t hold back. You can’t be afraid of the contact that you’re about to make. You have to arrive violently.”
If the Falcons feel compelled to blitz 33 percent of the time in the Super Bowl, that could be disaster.
Nobody in the NFL was better against the blitz this season than Brady, although the Falcons’ Matt Ryan was close. Their passer ratings against blitzes, according to Sportsradar, were 124.3 and 122.0, respectively.
Brady is a master at targeting gaps when an extra defender or two are sent up-field as opposed to dropping into coverage — as seen in the fact that he threw 14 touchdowns passes against blitzes and no interceptions.
Pressure is so critical it can’t be overstated, as seen even in two playoff games.
In the divisional round, the Texans pressured Brady 44 percent of the time, and he completed just 47 percent of his passes while throwing two interceptions after throwing just two in 12 regular-season games. New England won in part because Houston was so inept on offense.
In the AFC Championship game, the Steelers pressured Brady just 14 percent of the time, and he completed 76 percent of his passes for 384 yards and three touchdowns.
The Patriots surrendered 24 sacks in the regular season, fifth-fewest in the NFL. The Falcons’ 34 sacks tied the Patriots and Eagles for 16th-most.
The Falcons lost second-leading sacker Adrian Clayborn against Seattle, when he suffered a torn biceps muscle.
Bottom line, the Falcons want to pressure Brady, who completed 47 percent of his passes in the regular season when pressured. They’d love to do it without relying too much on blitzes.
“He’s a good quarterback; he’s got good pocket presence,” Beasley said. “I think we’re pretty good up front. We’ve got to attack him in different ways.”
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AtlienInTheGoodieMob
Superstar
I think Russell and Rodgers were a good test for us seeing how they are more mobile then Brady
AVXL
Laughing at you n*ggaz like “ha ha ha”
Yea but I think it's a double edged sword. Brady isn't mobile by a long shot, but he's surgical with this shyt. His ability to read and attack the blitz is GOAT. So yea we were able to get to Rodgers and Russ by bringing more pressure but I think we gotta find a balance of pressure and coverage. I know one thing tho we gotta hit Brady as much as possible and as often as possible
AVXL
Laughing at you n*ggaz like “ha ha ha”
Watchin this Patriots Football Life, the way Beli and his guys think is genius level 
@Trill Russell @R.E.N. Spells Ren @KevCo
@Trill Russell @R.E.N. Spells Ren @KevCo
Black Andy Dwyer
ATL
We're still a week away brehs 
AVXL
Laughing at you n*ggaz like “ha ha ha”
In New Orleans, they wrestle with Falcons place in Super Bowl
ATLANTA-FALCONS
By Steve Hummer - The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
0
Driving a cab decorated with a Falcons logo around New Orleans isn’t easy — even if it is tucked discretely on a lower corner of the back window. But Teddy Gelagabir is greatly enjoying that these days. (Steve Hummer/shummer@ajc.com)
Posted: 1:52 p.m. Sunday, January 29, 2017
NEW ORLEANS — There was a commotion on Magazine Street. Teddy Gelagabir had parked his provocative taxi in front of a hotel there, awaiting a fare. And a valet parking attendant had risen to the bait.
The two men’s voices raised in good-natured debate.
“Anybody but the Falcons,” Corey Davis declared.
“We got the best wide receiver. We got a MVP quarterback. Two great running backs,” Gelagabir reminded his foe.
Davis: “OK, I like your running backs.”
Gelagabir: “We’re gonna burn it up.”
In New Orleans, they wrestle with Falcons place in Super Bowl
Then Davis would make another run at the cab, as if trying to rip off the small Atlanta Falcons decal decorating the back window. And Gelagabir would block him. For one more day, he protected the bird.
That isn’t always the case while flying Falcons colors here in the belly of their most ardent rival. Gelagabir, who moved to New Orleans from Atlanta three years ago, has had to replace that decal maybe a dozen times, he estimated. The luggage rack atop his taxi still bears the damage from others who disagreed with his NFL affiliation. All in good (?) fun, he insisted.
For these are the best of times to be a displaced Falcons fan, your team in the Super Bowl while all around you simmers the discontent of your antagonists. “I’m loving it,” the cab driver said. “We joke around and have a lot of fun with it.”
The roles were reversed in 2010 when the Saints, born one year after the Falcons (1967), defeated Peyton Manning’s Indianapolis Colts in the Super Bowl and took ownership of the ultimate bragging right. Then it was the Falcons fan base that had to weigh conflicting emotions when deciding which way to lean in America’s biggest game.
Whether they want to admit it or not, these franchises are family, as closely related as cousins. They both are about the same age and have risen from the bleakest kind of competitive poverty. They both helped push the frontiers of the NFL southward. Both collide twice a year as divisional foes. And there is no racket quite like the one when Falcons and Saints fans intersect — save maybe when starlings flock.
Whether, if the Falcons win Sunday, they and their fans can rejoice quite so fully is open to question. The Saints victory had importance beyond the game, coming as it did less than five years after Hurricane Katrina. This was a restorative moment. The winds blew, the water rose, but the Saints remained, rooted deeper than ever into the community.
“I lost my voice for a month after that,” said Conrad Emerson, a sous chef taking a smoke break outside on the corner of Chartres and Wilkinson.
“The city went crazy. We stayed out until 4 or 5 a.m. It was like Mardi Gras had come early,” said Kevin Porter, over his glass of wine at the locals watering hole, Chuck’s Sports Bar, just outside the French Quarter.
But Falcons people certainly would like to test their capacity for celebration.
It is generally assumed the Falcons, as the non-titled commoner facing the lordly New England Patriots, will be popular in most precincts outside the northeastern corner of the map. But can they root for them way down here in Saints country?
T-Bob Hebert, the son of former Saints and Falcons quarterback Bobby Hebert, posed that question last week to listeners to his WWL (New Orleans) nighttime sports talk show. Respondents came in two distinct flavors.
The Never-Falcons People, those who told Hebert, “I can’t cheer for those stinking Dirty Birds.”
And those who consider the Falcons the least objectionable alternative. (Hebert, an LSU lineman who played his high school ball at Greater Atlanta Christian, counts himself loosely among this group. “I grew up kind of a Falcons fan,” he said. “But even beyond that I think they are easier to cheer for. The Patriots are a little haughty, a little cocky. And I’m getting some echoes of Alabama fans — the Yankee version.”
“I thought it was going to be very heavily slanted in New England’s favor, with just a small element going toward Atlanta,” Hebert said of this expectations going into his informal poll. “But I was surprised. It was really like 50-50, split down the middle.”
“I guess it’s a bit easier to cheer for David over Goliath. People get behind the underdog, the team trying to win for the first time. A lot of people don’t like the Patriots because they think they cheat. A lot of people don’t like the Patriots because they win all the time.”
With maybe a few traces of self-interest thrown in for seasoning. “Some people had some interesting logic about cheering for Atlanta, that it turns up the heat on Saints leadership. Carolina was in the Super Bowl last year (another divisional rival). The Falcons are in it this year. And if they win this Super Bowl you’ve lost your trump card over your arch rival. People think that sort of shake-up can re-invigorate the Saints franchise,” Hebert said.
The college-age clerk behind the counter at the Black and Gold Sports Shop in Metairie — where it’s all fleur-de-lis and no Falcons — figures she can afford to root for the rival. Even if that could mean no longer being able to hold the Saints Super Bowl victory over the head of the occasional Atlanta visitor who wanders into the store when the Falcons are in town, if only to engage in a little smack talk. “If they win, I can always say we got ours first,” Alaina Robinson said.
And the night manager working the door at Mother’s restaurant can swallow hard and cheer for the Falcons. He’s an Alabama guy and so is Falcons receiver Julio Jones, so that makes it marginally OK.
His friends don’t agree. “Oh, no, they look at me like I’m crazy,” Marty Muller said. “It hurts to pull for them. But you got to recognize the talent on that team.”
But some wounds just won’t heal.
In Jackson Square, tending to the mule-drawn carriages that he manages — look out for Bojo there, he likes to bite — Kevin Joseph remembered the bus trips he and his father used to make to Atlanta and old Fulton County Stadium to watch the Saints play. He can still hear the taunts of the Falcons fans.
“Ever since then I don’t like Atlanta,” he said.
“I do not like the Falcons. I don’t want them to win. I want the Saints to have the distinction of having won the Super Bowl (all to themselves),” Joseph said.
And he went back to cleaning up the mess that mules will make, certain that even that chore would be preferable to cheering for the Falcons.
at Aints fans, y'all can keep it real here brehs y'all rootin for the #RiseUp Gang 
@SubZeroDegrees @portcityplaya @Easy-E @clutch @horizon @Geoffrey_Chaucer
I think we're gonna target the interior of NE's line with a few stunts. That's how Beasley did a lot of his work during the season
we should be able to protect Matt since NE doesn't really bring pressure and they're not really good at getting pressure with their front. They try to mostly play coverage but I think we have too many guys that can hurt you to cover them all.
we should be able to protect Matt since NE doesn't really bring pressure and they're not really good at getting pressure with their front. They try to mostly play coverage but I think we have too many guys that can hurt you to cover them all.
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AVXL
Laughing at you n*ggaz like “ha ha ha”
Absolutely
Ain't no way half of y'all city want us to win and all of y'all on here want us to lose
I already knew think I know which Aints fans gonna be reppin red & black but I ain't gonna say it just yet
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I only rep this;
Ain't no way half of y'all city want us to win and all of y'all on here want y'all to lose
I already knew think I know which Aints fans gonna be reppin red & black but I ain't gonna say it just yet
Here's to ya'll blowing it twice, in your lifetime.
I'm rooting for Matt Ryan to get arrested for picking up a prostitute the night before the game
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