00:00A lot of it comes down to what your expectations were.
00:03And I think a lot of people didn't think it was going to get worse before it got better.
00:08And yet with the quarterback situation, and even with the return of Michael Penix,
00:13there's no guarantee that we're going to see any good brand of football.
00:17The players you brought in this offseason were none of them were top-end free agents.
00:22You didn't have a first-round draft pick, and you're missing your two first-round draft picks from two years
00:26ago.
00:26It just is what it is.
00:28So I'm with you.
00:29I don't know that there's anything that Arthur Blank can do.
00:31I mean, he literally just cleaned house.
00:34You can put a little bit of blame on Matt and Ian and whoever else you want to,
00:37but it's a bad situation nonetheless.
00:39I mean, it's just the blame goes all the way around.
00:42Yeah, and I think what makes yesterday so much worse is that the defense,
00:48which was put in bad situation after bad situation, and then they started –
00:55they started – I don't know if losing focus is the word, but it's kind of where I would go.
01:01Like, it just looked like they kind of lost that sense of urgency that the play with,
01:05and that's part – that's what we talk about when you're like, oh, it can't get any worse.
01:10Well, a seven-point loss on the road in Pittsburgh is not that bad.
01:16Bad, yesterday is horrific.
01:19It's awful.
01:20The come home, new regime against a division rival, and it looks like that,
01:27that is it being worst-case scenario.
01:30That is it being as bad as it can get.
01:32I do want to go back out to the phone lines.
01:34Caleb in Loganville is waiting, but I want to mention this tweet before we get there
01:38because we're talking about where the blame goes.
01:39And Bobby said, well, we have two QBs that claim they can't play.
01:42Our two best pass rushers are out, so blaming Stefanski is pointless right now.
01:46And I completely agree, and I mentioned this earlier.
01:49Okay, if you really want to blame Stefanski or Ian Cunningham,
01:53you could say you brought in an oft-injured quarterback
01:55to replace an oft-injured quarterback.
01:57I mean, that's really where it goes from there,
01:59but I don't think anybody saw it coming where you're dealing with an oblique
02:01and then a guy that's also cleared in doesn't want to play right now.
02:04So it just kind of is what it is.
02:06All right, Caleb in Loganville, good morning.
02:08What do you have for us this morning?
02:10Good morning.
02:11Just a couple things.
02:13Maybe it's just me from the outside looking,
02:15but I don't think our offensive line play has been too good either.
02:19I mean, they get two and a half seconds to pass the ball,
02:22and Cooper Rush, he's being rushed,
02:24and he's a third-string quarterback out there trying to make a play.
02:27He's overthrowing it.
02:28Our offensive line play is not good either,
02:30and these guys are getting paid billions,
02:31and they're the highest paid offensive line.
02:33And it's always every single week I hear, oh, well, that defensive line is good.
02:38Dude, they're all good.
02:40They're all going to be good, but it's like they're not – I don't know.
02:43And Nick Folk also, what the hell happened with him?
02:46I thought he was supposed to be one of the best percentage kickers.
02:48Dude, that dude is – that's one of the worst kickers I've ever seen.
02:52And I mean, it's just – I don't know.
02:54That's just awful.
02:54Yeah, I appreciate the phone call.
02:56I'm not going to defend people,
03:00but I didn't think the offensive line played that bad yesterday.
03:03I thought that – part of the problem for me is you're not threatened
03:10by the offense at all.
03:12There's no downfield threat.
03:13So you can kind of load up in that box and say,
03:16hey, we're just going to – we're going to play to stop the run.
03:22And that's kind of what happened yesterday.
03:24There's moments where – like, look, Cooper Rush had time yesterday in moments,
03:30and he held the ball too long.
03:32He's throwing late.
03:33The interception he throws that – was it Okereke or Lloyd that caught it?
03:39I'm not sure.
03:39I think it was Lloyd.
03:40I think it was Lloyd.
03:40He pushes it – like, they're playing zone, and the linebacker has depth.
03:46He's playing back at depth, and you just –
03:49Terrible decision.
03:49You just forced the ball in there,
03:51and it's going to be a layered throw anyways, right, Mike?
03:54Yeah, but I want to talk about this comment about the offensive line
03:57because I agree with him.
03:58I don't think they played good.
04:00I think they played better this week than they did last week.
04:02Last week, we mentioned a number of times on the show,
04:04I thought they played awful.
04:05And you can look at that in years past and kind of, okay,
04:10well, Bergeron's developing, whatever it may be.
04:12You don't have two of the top five highest-paid guards in the league,
04:15and Jake Matthews, who's making a significant amount of money as well.
04:17It's got to look better than it did.
04:19And to me, it's not necessarily even pass protection.
04:22We're going to go with gap scheme plays.
04:23We're going to run duo on third and one.
04:26And you can't – you're telling me with guys making $25 million at guard
04:30that we can't get a yard with Bajon Robinson in the backfield?
04:33So much, though, that it forced you to run a speed sweep with Drake London
04:36when you needed a short-yarded situation?
04:38It just can't happen.
04:40It can't happen with the way this roster is constructed right now
04:44that you can't pick up third and shorts.
04:45You just can't.
04:47You have to have the first down in those situations.
04:49And you're right about the Pittsburgh game and where they played.
04:54I just – I do know that when you don't feel threatened by an offense
05:01and when there is no downfield passing game, no threat of it at all,
05:05you can play and really put a lot of strain and pressure on the offensive line
05:12because of how you can play them defensively.
05:14Let's try to get another call in because we do have full phone lines this morning,
05:18404-726-0929.
05:20Let's head out to Jonesboro.
05:22We've got Cortez waiting.
05:23Cortez, how are you feeling after that Falcons game?
05:26Hey, good morning.
05:27Hey, here's my thing.
05:28Thanks for taking my call.
05:30Yeah.
05:30I think that with Jack Strand, because people like myself wanted to see Jack Strand
05:39for the longest and because he's been getting talked about so much that when he finally
05:44kind of got his chance, a lot of people are spending a lot from him.
05:49But to me, honestly, I don't think Jack Strand did bad.
05:52Most of the balls that he threw, I feel like most of some of the receivers just didn't catch
05:57the ball, the interception, I don't think it was on him.
06:01It was on the receiver because it bounced off of him.
06:04He scrambled, got a few first downs.
06:07And the last play that he did was like, you know, a rookie mistake.
06:12This is, you know, his first game.
06:13The ball sits down and tells him what he's doing.
06:15But I see inside of someone, if they had full reps in practice with the ones,
06:22then he would be a potentially great quarterback.
06:26And even though he didn't play that much in the game, I feel like he did better than Cooper
06:32almost.
06:32But I just think that, to me, I see Jack Strand, Jack Strand has a lot of potential.
06:40And I think a lot of people are kind of trying to judge him off of this one game that
06:45he didn't.
06:46Look, I think this is one of those cases where we see what we want to see.
06:50I don't think Jack Strand played any better or really any worse than Cooper Rush.
06:54Um, it just, this was the situation you were in.
06:57I do think there's a good point in there to bring up is that if you had a full set
07:01of
07:01reps with the ones, it might look a little different.
07:03I agree with that.
07:04And that's one of the reasons over the last couple of weeks, as we've moved towards Thursday
07:07night, I didn't think there was a world where you would see Michael Penix debuting on a
07:11Thursday night because he's not getting any reps.
07:13But in this crazy world we live in, he is getting first team reps when he's not playing.
07:18It's the craziest thing I've ever seen.
07:19So if you wanted to track and find somebody else to blame, find somebody who's giving Michael
07:24Penix the reps knowing he's not going to play on Sunday.
07:26That's, that's a tough one for me to swallow as well.
07:28We do have a lot of people.
07:29I put out a tweet last night asking how the Falcons fix this.
07:32Do you still want to see Jack Strand?
07:34And a lot of people are saying they want to see him with all the reps.
07:36They want to see him get the first team reps and then put him back out there.
07:39But we are taking your calls on this Falcons game all morning.
07:42We'll touch on college football coming up.
07:44Spoiler alert, the villain lost.
07:46We'll get into it on Sports Radio 92.9 The Game and the Odyssey app.
Comments