00:00What's your first impression so far of Kevin Stefanski, the head football coach, coming over from Cleveland?
00:05Yeah, I like him, Dan.
00:07I think that he is a big-picture guy.
00:10I think that he doesn't get caught up in the moment.
00:13I think he does a good job of kind of sorting out team concepts.
00:18He's very inclusive.
00:20There's not a singling out.
00:22What the media has tried to do here is, because of the quarterback situation, is they've tried to lay blame
00:29on someone with the quarterback.
00:31And think about the thing that he was presented when he got here.
00:35Okay, he's got an injured quarterback in Michael Penix.
00:37He had a new guy coming in, Tua Tagovailoa.
00:39You've got a guy named Trevor Simeon that's played a little bit in the league.
00:43And then you've got a young guy that you took in free agency, Jack Strand.
00:46You come to camp with that.
00:48Three of the four are injured before camp even starts.
00:51So now he's trying to, you know, he's doing the juggling act, trying to figure out Trevor Simeon's release.
00:58You bring in Cooper Rush, who ends up starting your first two games.
01:00He's only been on campus since the end of July trying to absorb this offense.
01:05It's been an interesting start to a guy that wants to kind of resurrect Atlanta.
01:10We haven't been to the playoffs in eight years here, Dan.
01:12You know that.
01:13And so there's a hunger in the city.
01:16This city burns with the Falcons and just haven't been able to get anything going.
01:20So tough start for Kevin.
01:21And I think he's done a great job of staying, staying the course and looking at the long, long view
01:26picture.
01:27You could be worse.
01:28You could be the Jets.
01:29They haven't been in 15 years.
01:31That's a shot of my guys behind the scene here a little bit.
01:34All right.
01:34So, hey, the Falcons defense.
01:37You know, there seems to be a lot of talent on this football team, as you mentioned.
01:41You know, I mean, Kyle Pitts is there.
01:43Drake London, you have B. John Robinson, as we mentioned.
01:45Also on the defensive side, you know, Raheem maybe didn't do that great a job as a head football coach,
01:51but they brought talent in.
01:52It's really just figuring out, you know, the quarterback position here, because you guys look like you could still take
01:58this NFC South with that roster that you have.
02:01Is that fair?
02:02Yeah, I think so, Dan.
02:04I think that defensively, Jeff Ulbrich's done a phenomenal job with coming in and organizing the defense, doing some of
02:11the things they needed to do to fit the personnel.
02:14From a defensive standpoint, you know, they got handed a little bit of a tough break in the fact that
02:20Jalen Walker tore his knee up, a kid they drafted in the first round out of Georgia, who was coming
02:24on, had five or six sacks a year ago as a rookie.
02:27And then, of course, the James Pierce Jr. situation, where James got in trouble in the offseason, didn't handle his
02:33business right, and so now the league has suspended him for eight games.
02:36Those are supposed to be your starting edge guys, and you've started the season without those two guys, and you
02:42look at the defensive performance, I think they're number one or two in the league against the run right now.
02:46Their pass rush rate is right near the top that they've ever had, even though they had 57 sacks a
02:52year ago, which was a club record.
02:54So Ulbrich's done a really nice job of blending some new personnel into his attack-style defense.
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