00:00All right, let's go back to Mercedes-Benz Stadium now.
00:02Dave Archer standing by with Falcons head coach Kevin Stefanski.
00:05This interview brought to you by Mercedes-Benz,
00:07official luxury vehicle of your Atlanta Falcons.
00:10Dave?
00:10Kev, a bit of a slow start today, and it kind of trickled
00:13until you kind of caught fire there late in the football game.
00:15Yeah, disappointed with that start.
00:17You look up and you're down a couple scores, so we're very frustrated.
00:20We have to find a way to start faster on the offensive side of the ball
00:24because you love how you finish there and fighting at the end there,
00:27but bottom line is we have to start faster.
00:29Is there anything that Chicago maybe threw at you defensively
00:31that maybe caught the offense off guard?
00:33No, I mean, they do an excellent job with their pressure packages.
00:36As we all know, Dennis Allen does an outstanding job,
00:38so we've got to look at it and find ways to score points earlier.
00:42Is that one of those deals?
00:43You guys jumped into tempo, and you seem to really get some spark out of the tempo.
00:48That's kind of a double-edged sword sometimes, isn't it?
00:50It is, and obviously we'll always look at things that we can do potentially there
00:55to move the football, but really that start is on us.
00:58It's just coaches to find a way to get this team going early.
01:01Caleb Williams back on the field for Chicago,
01:03and he seemed to spark them, his ability to kind of create when nothing's there.
01:07He did, and that's how he plays, and you have to tip your cap to them
01:10and certainly to Caleb Williams and just his ability to move around,
01:13buy time, and make plays down the field.
01:14I know you want to brush up special teams.
01:17Had a couple turnovers on special teams.
01:18Had some penalties last week.
01:20Is that an area you've got to continue to grow, right?
01:22It is.
01:22It's really disappointing to turn it over twice.
01:24Obviously, Zachariah is somebody that we're going to be counting on.
01:26I mean, he's a guy that we count on in these ballgames.
01:28We'll continue to count on him.
01:30Hopefully, you can learn from this.
01:31All right.
01:31Thanks for your time.
01:32Thanks, Arch.
01:33All right.
01:33Well, let's start with the slow start that Kevin Stefanski was alluding to,
01:37and this game almost got out of hand right in the first quarter.
01:42The Bears, as I said, they got the opening kickoff.
01:44They took it right down the field.
01:45The Falcons did get them into a third and long.
01:48It was third and 11 on the Falcons, 42 on that first drive.
01:52And Chicago came out and hit a hook and ladder on a third down play on the first drive of
01:58the game,
01:58which we all here in the studio were kind of surprised to see that run that early.
02:02But it was effective.
02:03They converted the first down.
02:04They went in and scored.
02:05Now, that does happen.
02:06Okay.
02:06You do sometimes take a right hook on the first defensive series of the game.
02:10But then the Falcons, their first drive was a three and out,
02:13and it was an ugly three and out.
02:14B. John Robinson did have a six-yard run on first down.
02:18Then they tried to run a screen to him on second down, lost five yards,
02:21and then an incompletion to Pitts on third down.
02:24And the Bears ran, as I said, 19 plays in the first quarter to the Falcons' three.
02:30Yeah, just maddening.
02:31And, you know, one of the things is when you look at the ways in which the Falcons run wide
02:36zone.
02:36I mentioned earlier B. John Robinson's had nine carries today.
02:39I would venture, Mike, to say at least eight of those probably on wide zone style plays,
02:44we're not doing anything on the front side of wide zone.
02:48There is a difference between wide zone and outside zone,
02:50but we're not doing anything on the front side of wide zone that makes you think that B. John is
02:53going to keep the ball front side,
02:55which is a problem in and of itself on zone run plays.
02:57But after one or two plays for B. John Robinson,
03:00he did have the explosive that I believe was about 25 yards at some point in the first quarter.
03:05After that, they really did a nice job of kind of crashing the backside.
03:08And we did nothing to negate that.
03:10There's no bootleg.
03:12There's no counterplay off of that.
03:14There's no misdirection.
03:15There's no end around.
03:16There's no orbit motion.
03:17There's no nothing really to keep them from crashing in the backside.
03:20And it's a conversation that's going to always be happening around Michael Penix Jr.
03:24inside of this offense.
03:25They do have zone read.
03:27But when you have a quarterback that doesn't move well outside the pocket,
03:29there's no reason to hold the backside on some of these runs.
03:32And that's what can be frustrating around the utilization of B. John Robinson.
03:35You mentioned the big hook and ladder play.
03:39It was numerous times today on third down that they were able to throw the ball to the middle of
03:43the field,
03:44hit Cole Comet or Colston Loveland or Luther Burden,
03:47and those guys gained 15, 20 yards, it felt like.
03:49Even at the end of the game in the fourth quarter,
03:51I believe the Bears are facing like a third and 17.
03:54They gained 16 yards on third down just by simply checking it down into the middle of the field.
03:59And you mentioned it earlier, you're without a couple of starting linebackers.
04:03Christian Harris was inactive.
04:04So you're really down to your last two linebackers today.
04:07And it became maddening.
04:08It became frustrating.
04:09So hats off to them for understanding how to pick Jeff Ulbrich's defense apart.
04:13And, you know, I think it's back to the drawing board offensively for what we're able to do
04:18and what we feel like we're capable of.
04:19That play you're referencing, the final play of the third quarter,
04:22the Bears had a third and 18 at the Falcons, 39.
04:25Remember, already leading 28-7.
04:27So a field goal essentially puts it out of reach.
04:29And they were able to get very easily seven yards to put them into field goal range.
04:34And then Cairo Santos hit it.
04:35That made it 31-7.
04:36Again, the Falcons did come back and make it interesting at the end
04:39and actually have the ball with a chance to tie with a touchdown and a two-point conversion.
04:45Penix, I thought, was off early.
04:47His stats end up looking pretty good, 19-33 for 225 yards, three touchdowns, and no interceptions.
04:54But, again, kind of going back to the slow start that we're talking about
04:58and Kevin Stefanski was very concerned about with Arch,
05:01it felt like the Bears were getting to Penix early.
05:05And at one point, Arch even made the comment,
05:07there was a third down play where he felt Penix appeared to panic somewhat
05:13and could have taken more time to maybe get the ball to Drake London.
05:17And that might have been a product of him just not feeling very confident in the pocket.
05:21I don't think there's any doubt.
05:22And, you know, numerous times you see checkdowns on the flat.
05:26Lameda Zaccheaus is out there.
05:28There's, I think, a big third down play at some point in the fourth quarter,
05:32maybe the third quarter, where Michael Penix has taken a shot
05:34in a double coverage on Drake London.
05:37And yet, you could dump it off into the flat,
05:39allow your guys to kind of get some yardage after the catch.
05:42I think the frustrating thing for me is we went from an offense that
05:44it was Bajon and Bajon and Bajon.
05:47And you drafted Zachariah Branch, you signed to Lameda Zaccheaus,
05:49you bring in Jahan Dotson, and you think, okay, we're not going to have to ask Bajon
05:53to do as much offensively because we have other guys that can really play those slot positions,
05:58the urgency with your feet to be able to, you know, pick up yards after the catch.
06:03And we have not allowed these guys to do this.
06:05We essentially have turned into a Drake London team when we're throwing down the field.
06:09But it's long-developing.
06:11And look, Mike, I never played quarterback.
06:13I don't even pretend to know how to play quarterback.
06:15But if you look at one thing to me that's an indicator of whether or not a team is successful
06:19offensively,
06:20it's urgency and the footwork from the quarterback.
06:22And I've yet to see that from Michael Penix this year.
06:25It's something they have got to get better at.
06:26Even when Kirk Cousins was having bad games, he knew he had to get the ball off.
06:30They're bringing six.
06:31They know he can't move.
06:32His feet popping.
06:33It's one of the things you always saw from Drew Brees.
06:35It's one of the things you always saw from some of the other pocket-style quarterbacks.
06:38It's an ability to pop your feet, look left, look middle, look right, check down, move the offense down the
06:44field.
06:44And yet, slow movement, under center.
06:48You just turn around, fake the handoff, 1-1,000, 2-1,000, 3-1,000, and it just seems
06:55like it takes forever sometimes.
06:57And that's just not on Penix.
06:58It just felt like everything offensively for the Falcons was too slow to develop.
07:02Ironically, once they got into tempo as they were trying to chase the game down 31-7,
07:07that's where they started to have more success.
07:09All right, plenty more to come on the Mercedes-Benz postgame show.
07:12We'll go back to Arch of the Falcons locker room for more reaction.
07:15A 31-23 loss for the Falcons today.
07:18They fall to 2-4 on the season, 0-3 at home.
07:23This is the Mercedes-Benz postgame show on the Atlanta Falcons Radio Network.
07:27Org of Arizona?
