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0-3 AT HOME? Mike Conti and Mike Johnson pull no punches after the Falcons' 31-23 loss to the Chicago Bears. Why did Bijan Robinson only get 9 carries? How did Dennis Allen's defense confuse Michael Penix Jr. all afternoon?
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00:00Welcome into the Mercedes-Benz post-game show, Mercedes-Benz official luxury vehicle of your Atlanta Falcons.
00:06Mike Conti filling in for Grant McCauley today along with Mike Johnson.
00:09It has been a very tough weekend for sports in the city of Atlanta.
00:15And the Falcons, the latest Atlanta-based team to take a loss this weekend.
00:1931-23 this afternoon at Mercedes-Benz Stadium to the Chicago Bears.
00:23The Falcons, by the way, now 0-3 at home this year.
00:26A game where the Bears had a 31-7 lead one play into the fourth quarter.
00:32And it felt like the Falcons were getting run out of the building.
00:35And then, a little bit of a spirited comeback with 16 unanswered by the Falcons.
00:40Two touchdowns and a pair of two-point conversions.
00:42But Mike, you said on the pregame show that maybe the biggest matchup to watch today,
00:47the Falcons' offensive tackles against the Bears' edge rushers.
00:51And Dennis Allen, the defensive coordinator for the Chicago Bears, gave the Falcons problems all day
00:59to the extent that when the Falcons had the ball down by eight with hopes of maybe tying this game
01:05and getting to overtime, it was that nickel blitz that Art said the Falcons could not pick up all day.
01:11The nickel blitz that produced the third and final and fatal turnover for the Falcons today.
01:16Yeah, I thought it was an incredible job, honestly, all day by Dennis Allen to be able to draw those
01:22plays up.
01:23And essentially, I was talking about the backup edge rushers for the Chicago Bears.
01:26You don't have Montez Sweat.
01:28You don't have Dio Dengbo.
01:29So what does he do?
01:30He tightens the defensive line of scrimmage.
01:32He says, you know what?
01:33Our edge rushers might not be as good.
01:35Let's blitz off the edge.
01:36Let's bring the nickel.
01:37Let's bring the safeties through the B-gaps.
01:38Let's try to confuse Michael Penix.
01:40That way, you're having these things, what you call on the offensive line,
01:43a ricochet block where Jawan Taylor has stepped down to the B-gap
01:47and tries to ricochet back out and protect Michael Penix.
01:50And the Falcons still haven't solved it.
01:51I mean, Tommy Reese, Kevin Stefanski, Alex Van Pelt, Tanner Engstring, Bill Cowell.
01:57We can go all the way down.
01:58They still haven't solved and found a way to do that.
02:00I think when you go up against a Dennis Allen defense, Mike,
02:04you cannot find yourself in third and long because that's where he feasts off of plays like this.
02:09Yet, time and time again, you found yourself in third and long.
02:12And your playmakers didn't do enough on the early downs.
02:15Michael Penix didn't dissect enough.
02:17I thought it was just brutal to watch.
02:19That was a huge story in this game today for the Falcons as they were scuffling offensively.
02:23They were 3 of 12 on third down today.
02:26And when we get a little more time, we'll look up the average distance to gain on third down for
02:32the Falcons.
02:32But how many times today did it feel like the Falcons were stuck in third and eight, third and 11,
02:39third and nine?
02:40And we were talking about this before we went on the air with Michael Penix still nursing the sore ribs
02:46and not really a threat to run.
02:48When you get into those third and long situations, it really opens up the exotic looks that Dennis Allen, the
02:55Bears defensive coordinator, can send.
02:57But to an extent, it also somewhat limits the playbook for the Falcons, does it not?
03:01Well, there's no doubt.
03:02And we're going to focus on third down for good reason.
03:05But there's a reason you found yourself in third and long so much.
03:08One of the less inspiring offensive game plans in a run game.
03:12You have the greatest player that we think on the planet, Bajon Robinson, yet you didn't even get double-digit
03:16carries for him.
03:17Not only that, he ran one, I think, one run scheme today.
03:20I think he ran wide zone.
03:21I know that Brian Robinson got a duo play in there.
03:23I believe there was a trap right at the end of the first half, and they pulled Chris Lindstrom.
03:29But you're not doing enough.
03:31You're not doing enough for the run game.
03:32I thought the run game designs throughout the first four games of the season were great.
03:37You got to Baltimore last week, and it completely went away.
03:40You had the same offensive game plan in the run game last week as you did today.
03:44And you couldn't be competitive with it.
03:46And to me, it's almost malpractice to say Bajon Robinson's going to have nine carries.
03:50I know you got down early.
03:52I know you're kind of chasing your tail a little bit.
03:54But you have to find more ways to be able to get him the football.
03:57And do we want him to have 25 carries and 10 catches?
04:00No.
04:00I don't think that's great for Bajon in the long term.
04:02But right now, sitting where you're sitting, and he's targeted on an early screen and has nine carries,
04:08I can't sit here and say that any of those are good ideas in winning football formulas.
04:12So it's just head-scratcher from start to end.
04:15I'm with you.
04:16I'm glad they made it a game at a certain point and got a couple of two-point conversions.
04:20But in the end, what Ben Johnson is doing offensively is in glaring contrast to what the Falcons attempted to
04:27do today on their offensive game plan.
04:28In what way?
04:29Well, you saw the design, right?
04:31I mean, Colson Loveland comes in the game and has 12 catches on the season, right?
04:35And it was kind of having the conversation in pregame with Bo Morgan.
04:37I'm like, all right, Colson Loveland has 12.
04:39Kyle Pitts has 10.
04:40I think we expected a lot more out of both these guys, both these fan bases.
04:44And Colson Loveland catches the first ball of the game.
04:45And all of a sudden, you're off to the races in terms of catching the Falcons off balance defensively, right?
04:51And I think that Jeff Ulbricht kind of knew it.
04:53Then you get dinged up at the linebacker position.
04:55Then Avion Terrell gets a little bit dinged up.
04:58Now, all of a sudden, you're wondering what Josh Woods knows how to do and what checks he knows how
05:02to get in and out of.
05:03So I just thought they did a great job getting to the exterior.
05:06They went into 13 personnel with Loveland and Cole Komet and allowed their tight ends to go to work,
05:12much in the way Baltimore did a week ago, where you're attacking Samson Ebukam and asking Zedaria Smith this week
05:18to get out on the exterior and make plays.
05:20Braylon Trice, I don't think they want him to, but he is playing a massive role defensively for the Falcons
05:25right now.
05:26So you're putting those guys up to bat where you know that they're thin as far as the depth goes.
05:30And as thin as we thought the Chicago Bears were on the edge, they reacted to that.
05:35They didn't ask their edge players to do too much.
05:37Dennis Allen said, hey, we're going to take some things off of your shoulders.
05:40We're going to give you support on the edges, and the Falcons could not take advantage of that.
05:43Now, the Falcons did get some stops, and ultimately, that helped to keep them in the game.
05:47And let's go all the way back to how this game started.
05:49Chicago received the opening kickoff and marched right down the field in 10 plays.
05:54And then the Falcons went three and out.
05:56The Bears had another nine-yard touchdown drive.
05:59The Bears ran 19 of the first 22 plays of this game.
06:04They then had a long field goal attempt to try to make it 17 to nothing, and it could have
06:09been really game over at that point.
06:11Kyber Santos missed what would have been a career-long field goal, and the Falcons responded with a Jahan Dotson
06:15touchdown.
06:16But as the second quarter went along, the Falcons were getting stops, and then Zachariah Branch muffed a punt inside
06:24the 10-yard line,
06:25and Chicago turned that into a touchdown.
06:26And points off turnovers end up being a very significant factor in this game today.
06:31Ten points off special teams turnovers by the Chicago Bears today in a game they won by eight.
06:37Now, I would also just throw out, I don't know if this ends up being an eight-point game if
06:42it's not 31-7 early in the fourth quarter.
06:45Arch even mentioned how it did appear that the Bears had rotated some personnel on defense in the fourth quarter,
06:52and the Falcons playing with tempo, not to take anything away from them.
06:5591 and 57-yard drives to get back into the game.
06:59But I would say that the Falcons' defense, all things considered, and also considering that you lost Divine Diablo very
07:06early in this game to an injury,
07:08and Kendall Daniels to what appeared to be a very serious injury, and we're happy to report that he's at
07:13Grady right now,
07:14but is alert and conscious and has feeling in all his extremities, so that is good news.
07:19But even in spite of losing both Diablo and Kendall Daniels, I do feel like you got enough stops to
07:28somewhat keep yourself in this ballgame,
07:33similar to the Panthers game, which the Falcons were blown out of at home in Week 2.
07:37It was that starting field position off those special teams turnovers that ultimately doomed the Falcons today.
07:42I couldn't agree more, and you look at both Zachary Branch fumbles, I loved, let's look at the positive of
07:49this,
07:49I loved watching Bajon and Drake kind of circle around him on the sideline.
07:52He goes in there and throws his helmet, you can see what the leadership is offensively,
07:56both those guys kind of circling around him, putting their arm around him.
07:59No matter what he's done, and this being the sixth game of his career,
08:02he's got a bright star ahead of him in terms of what he can do offensively and on special teams.
08:07But frustrating. Nonetheless, they're able to really rush the passer and open up.
08:13It just felt like at no point, though, and we're going to point to the fact that we got some
08:19huge stops.
08:19They also helped you out a ton. I don't know.
08:21They had a lot of penalties.
08:23Pelties, insane. And that's going to be something they're going to be absolutely sick about,
08:26because if you focus on those, this game should have been more out of hand if you look at it
08:30from that way as well.
08:31No, you're 100% right. The Bears had 12 penalties for 133 yards,
08:35the most penalty yardage they've had in a game in 10 years.
08:37You have 133 penalty yards in a road game, you're not going to win very often,
08:41and the Bears had a blowout margin in this game most of the way.
08:44Here's what negated that penalty stat.
08:47The Bears ran 73 plays today to the Falcons' 50.
08:51The Bears had 40 minutes and 8 seconds of possession time.
08:5640 minutes and 8 seconds to 1952, the time of possession edge.
09:00So an almost exact 2-1 time of possession advantage to the Chicago Bears.
09:06Again, some of that owes to special teams turnovers.
09:09You're basically giving them bonus possessions when that happens.
09:12But you're not going to win football games in the NFL if you have the ball for only 19 minutes
09:18and 52 seconds.
09:19No, and look, there's a lot of reasons the Falcons lost a lopsided victory today.
09:24And I'm going to try not to harp on what I believe Tommy Reese's game plan was, though.
09:28But even when you found success offensively, it felt like, okay, that's a crazy play design.
09:35The Jahan Dotson back-shoulder touchdown comes on, what, third and goal from the six-yard line?
09:41The whole game seemed to hinge on that.
09:43I'm like, that was our play design, a back-shoulder throw.
09:45Now, he went out there and operated it, and you found points that way.
09:47But you look at the fact that the Bears come out in the first quarter, they run a hook and
09:51ladder.
09:51I mean, they're in a third-line situation, they run a hook and a ladder.
09:54That, to me, the contrast between the way that Ben Johnson went about putting his game plan together
09:59and what he's able to do for Caleb Williams.
10:02You mentioned time of possession.
10:03Mike, Caleb Williams started the game 12 of 12 through the air.
10:06It seemed like he was playing pitch and catch.
10:08I've seen worse passing stats on pass Skelly on air.
10:15So what he was able to do early in the game and really the way in which he operated that
10:20offense,
10:20we wondered if he'd be able to run around at all with the hamstring.
10:23He absolutely did.
10:24I don't think he tried to do too much.
10:26Did a nice job throwing it away.
10:27He did take four sacks today, and kudos to the Falcons' defense for being able to get him down on
10:32the ground.
10:34But, you know, he's a moving target in and of himself.
10:37Michael Penix is a guy that's going to stand in the pocket.
10:39I just really wanted them to make Michael Penix a moving target,
10:42and I do not think we did that with any success today offensively.
10:46Well, unfortunately, Carolina and New Orleans both won today,
10:50so the Falcons did not get any help.
10:52Carolina went up to Philadelphia and beat the Eagles 25-14,
10:56so the Panthers now are 3-2.
10:58They are a game and a half ahead of the Falcons and New Orleans in first place in the NFC
11:03South.
11:04New Orleans winning at the New York Giants, a wild game there this afternoon, 34-27.
11:09Tampa Bay is in overtime against Pittsburgh.
11:12There's two minutes to play in overtime.
11:14The Steelers have scored a touchdown, so Tampa Bay trailing 26-19 deep into overtime.
11:21They do have the ball around midfield, like I said, with two minutes to play,
11:25but the Buccaneers are not really a factor in the divisional race right now.
11:29If they end up losing that game, they'll be 1-5.
11:30If they win that game, then you'll have three teams, Tampa, Atlanta, and New Orleans,
11:35all at 2-4 with Carolina at 3-2.
11:38It's all because the Falcons lost this afternoon to the Chicago Bears, 31-23,
11:42a game in which the Falcons trailed 31-7 in the fourth quarter.
11:46Plenty more to come on the Mercedes-Benz postgame show.
11:49We'll hear from Kevin Stefanski and other Falcons players in the locker room with Dave Archer.
11:55We'll also look at the stats.
11:56We'll have the highlights, and we'll break down everything that went wrong for the Falcons today.
11:59They're now 0-3 at home in 2026, falling to the Bears, 31-23.
12:04This is the Mercedes-Benz postgame show on the Atlanta Falcons radio network.