- 10 minutes ago
Zinno discusses the Falcons loss to the Bears and how there’s plenty of blame to go around. But those who are solely blaming Michael Penix Jr. are being lazy. There were plenty of things that had gone wrong on Sunday that many are failing to address.
Zinno continues to discuss what is Penix’s fault and areas that he certainly needs to improve in. But he also preaches there needs to be a level of patience for his learning curve.
Finally, Zinno discusses the WNBA and their stance on the national anthem. The league continually chooses not to enforce rules that they have on their books, and that’s the problem.
Zinno continues to discuss what is Penix’s fault and areas that he certainly needs to improve in. But he also preaches there needs to be a level of patience for his learning curve.
Finally, Zinno discusses the WNBA and their stance on the national anthem. The league continually chooses not to enforce rules that they have on their books, and that’s the problem.
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SportsTranscript
00:01Good morning and welcome in to A to Z here on Sports Radio, 92.9 The Game, where today I
00:05tell you, if you're looking for someone to blame, you always pick the easiest target.
00:10Welcome in once again here to A and Z on 92.9thegame.com and 92.9 The Game YouTube.
00:15Make sure you guys are subscribed. If you're watching on YouTube, make sure you guys hit that subscribe button.
00:20Hit the thumbs up as well. Drop a comment down below. Let me know your thoughts on the show, what
00:23you like and what you don't like as we continue on here on A to Z.
00:26Today, we're going to react to the Falcons' loss to the Chicago Bears, and there's a lot that went on
00:31in that game that people aren't looking at.
00:33And obviously, yes, Michael Penix is going to be the target of a lot of things, but I'll explain why
00:38the target is in the wrong spot.
00:40We'll get to that. Plus, we got shovels of wisdom and a little note on the WNBA that once again
00:45continues to make sure its fans hate it the most.
00:49All that is coming up and more right after this on A to Z.
00:52My calculations are correct. When this baby hits 88 miles per hour, you're going to see some serious...
01:01It's time for A to Z with Mark Zeno.
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01:23When Atlanta talks sports, there's only one place to turn.
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01:33A to Z starts now.
01:41So, the Falcons lose to the Chicago Bears 31-24, and the game wasn't that close.
01:46We all know that.
01:47If you watch the game, you realize that it was 31-7 in the fourth quarter,
01:54and they just never really were able to get into this thing at any point in time.
01:58And, of course, what happens in a game like this where you get beat pretty soundly?
02:02Everybody runs to blame somebody, which is understandable.
02:05And I'm not saying that there's not blame to go around.
02:07But the lazy thing to do, and the easy thing to do, is to blame Michael Penix,
02:12which many people have done.
02:15And while a part of me understands that theory in blaming the quarterback,
02:21but the idea that that was the biggest thing that went wrong on Sunday is laughable,
02:26because it's just not true.
02:28It's simply not the case of what happened.
02:30There are a litany of things that went wrong,
02:32and Michael Penix is on the list of things to blame that didn't go well on Sunday.
02:36I'm not saying he's not.
02:38But I could easily put the defense overall, the secondary, the defensive game plan.
02:43I think you could put the offensive game plan in there,
02:47the inability to keep Bajon Robinson in the game, and Michael Penix,
02:51and the offensive line.
02:52All those things were part of the reason.
02:54When you get beat that badly, it's not just one thing.
02:56And the idea that we want to make it one thing, or people want to make it one thing,
03:00it's stupid.
03:01It's lazy, and it's not what people who are intellectually honest do.
03:06That's the hot take world that we live in.
03:07Blame the quarterback, right?
03:08Blame Michael Penix.
03:09And furthermore, the people who want to blame Michael Penix are only doing so
03:13to continue to further their narrative.
03:15You know, the narrative that, oh, he was soft, he was weak, he's not the guy,
03:19he's not a franchise quarterback, he's not, you know, all those things.
03:22Just put it on top of the list, right?
03:25So that group of people, you probably need to just go ignore,
03:28because they're not being honest with you.
03:29They're not being honest with themselves about why the Falcons lost the game,
03:34and why the Falcons, after the first two weeks, look so good with Michael Penix.
03:38In the last two weeks, not so much, right?
03:41Like, again, this is a 2-4 team.
03:43They've got to improve, and they've got to improve fast.
03:46They haven't won a game at home.
03:47That needs to change.
03:48And obviously, the fans in the stadium, we'll address that here in a moment,
03:51but all those things that went on, how you land on Penix being the problem to me is silly.
03:58I mean, objectively, Caleb Williams completed his first 12 passes.
04:03He was 14 of 17 in the first half with a touchdown.
04:06How is any of that on Michael Penix?
04:09How?
04:11They couldn't stop him.
04:13Furthermore, they didn't pressure him.
04:15They got three incompletions in the first half.
04:17Two of them, okay, led to the punts that the Bears had in the first half.
04:22Two of them.
04:23The two times they got an incompletion, they stopped him from scoring.
04:27The third time was an incompletion.
04:29They scored a touchdown, and it was the last touchdown drive.
04:30It was Colston Loveland, who it was just, I think, a bad route more on Loveland
04:35than it was a bad pass from Williams.
04:36But they scored anyway.
04:38But the point is, is that, like, you dug yourself a hole,
04:42not because Michael Penix played poorly at the outset.
04:45You dug the hole because the defense couldn't get off the field.
04:47Guys, they held the ball for about eight minutes in the first half.
04:50It's unsustainable.
04:53And no team is ever going to be in a game where they hold the ball
04:56for eight minutes in the first half.
04:58You're asking an awful lot of the defense.
05:00Look, this is a good defense.
05:01Are they going to have bad days?
05:03Yeah.
05:03We talked about this a couple episodes ago on A to Z,
05:05about what is it like when the defense can't play well?
05:10Does Penix have enough in the bag to be able to pick them up over the top?
05:14I still think the answer, to a certain extent, to that is yes.
05:16I lean that it's more yes.
05:17But again, you have to possess the ball.
05:20You know?
05:20And you could argue, okay, the Falcons went three and out, three and out.
05:23Is that on Penix?
05:24Maybe.
05:25I mean, we could sit here and dissect the whole thing if you want.
05:28That's, you know, there's some value in doing that.
05:33But again, it's like they scored the first two times they touched the ball.
05:38I mean, the Falcons' first drive was Robinson for six.
05:41Then it was a – I thought it was a bad screen pass to Robinson.
05:44He got dumped for five yards and then an incompletion on third and nine.
05:48Okay.
05:50Stop him.
05:50Get off the field.
05:51That didn't happen.
05:53The next time they went three and out again.
05:55Okay.
05:57It was a short pass to Drake London, then another stupid screen that Bijan got
06:00blown up on, and he lost three yards, and then it was another incompletion
06:04on a pass that maybe, if I remember correctly, Zahia should have caught.
06:07But regardless, like, just understand what you're watching in the game and
06:12understand what went wrong and why it went the way it did before you assign
06:16the blame to one thing because that's not the case.
06:19Now, I will address Michael Penix here, and I'll address all the criticisms
06:23of him because he was not as bad early in the game as you wanted, but he also
06:27certainly wasn't as good at the end of the game as you wanted in garbage time,
06:30right?
06:30Like, it's just, you know, those things you have to acknowledge.
06:34But when we talk about Michael Penix, okay, the criticisms that I think are
06:39fair, okay, to this point, does he struggle to process things at the line of
06:44scrimmage?
06:45Probably.
06:47Probably.
06:47I mean, the Bears threw a lot at him.
06:48They blitzed a ton, right?
06:50They blitzed a ton on him all day long.
06:54And him understanding where the blitz is coming from, what the reads are, and
06:57things of that nature, you know, I looked at, dissected a couple of
07:00plays, and figured out, you know, kind of what he's missing.
07:04And a lot of it does come from what he's seeing at the line of scrimmage and
07:07what he's able to pick up on and what he's not.
07:10And so I think it's fair to say he's still learning.
07:16I've told you guys this for two weeks.
07:17You have to give Penix some time to grow.
07:20If you're only focused on the result of the game, you're always going to be
07:24disappointed when it doesn't go your way.
07:27That's not how you can measure this at this point in time.
07:30I'll say it again for, like, the fifth straight week.
07:32Remember, week-to-week league, we're trying to win every week.
07:34The overarching of the season is Michael Penix, our franchise quarterback.
07:37Is he going to grow?
07:38Is he going to develop into that?
07:40We have four games with Michael Penix.
07:41That's it.
07:42This year.
07:43We have 16 total games of Michael Penix.
07:46That's less than a rookie season, guys.
07:48I get his age.
07:49I get the injury.
07:50I get all those things.
07:51Separate argument.
07:52Take any quarterback over 16 games, and you see what you have.
07:55I've already seen people do this stuff, and I hate when people do this.
07:58But if you look at Matt Ryan's stat through the first 16 games,
08:01and Michael Penix's stats, they're, like, identical.
08:03It means nothing.
08:04It doesn't.
08:06All it does is tell you that young quarterbacks don't typically have blow-up
08:10numbers that are eye-popping.
08:12Okay, thanks.
08:13Welcome to the party.
08:15Glad you figured that out.
08:16Now, speaking of the pressure in the Blitz,
08:18oh, Michael Penix is bad under pressure.
08:20He can't handle the pressure.
08:21Oh, God.
08:22Another lazy take.
08:24Guys, every quarterback is worse under pressure.
08:2795% of every quarterback in the league has lesser numbers under pressure
08:31than they do when they have a clean pocket.
08:33Why is this a revelation?
08:35Why is anybody acting like that's not the norm?
08:38Now, could you talk about how much worse he is under pressure?
08:42Comparatively speaking to other quarterbacks, yes,
08:44that's a fair conversation to have.
08:45But, again, I'll go back to he's 16 games in.
08:50He's 16 games in.
08:52And, oh, by the way, he's on his second coach and second system
08:57that he has to learn, all the reads and everything else.
08:59So I'm not giving him a pass on being bad under pressure.
09:04I'm not saying it's not something that you can't notice.
09:09I'm saying you have to keep it in context.
09:11And the context simply is that he still has to learn how to be better under pressure.
09:16Fair.
09:18But blaming Michael Penix for the loss to the Bears because he stinks under pressure is silly.
09:23It's, again, got to get better.
09:25100%.
09:26Not the reason they lost the game.
09:28It's not.
09:30Can we talk about his accuracy?
09:32Sure.
09:33Absolutely fair.
09:35You know, there are some throws that are a little bit iffy.
09:38Throws that are a little bit off.
09:39I get that.
09:40Is some of that a result of the pressure?
09:41Yeah.
09:43Is some of that a result of the play call?
09:45Sure.
09:46Is some of that a result of not looking at the right guy and seeing who's really open and who's
09:50not?
09:50Yeah.
09:52All those things are fair, nuanced criticisms.
09:56But just to flatly say he stinks under pressure.
09:59Lame.
09:59Lazy.
10:00Boring.
10:01Be smarter.
10:01Be better.
10:02It's not the reality.
10:03It's not the case.
10:05Every quarterback struggles under pressure.
10:07Jared Goff's been to a Super Bowl.
10:08His numbers under pressure are awful.
10:11A lot of quarterbacks are bad under pressure.
10:13He's got to get better.
10:14I'm not saying he doesn't.
10:16If they want to win games, he's got to get better.
10:18Fair.
10:19Fair.
10:19All that is in the realm of what we can say about Michael Penix.
10:25But this desire to not make him successful, the desire to not want him to be successful is silly.
10:31I keep saying it.
10:32It is in the best short-term and long-term interest of the Falcons that Michael Penix works out.
10:37Does anybody have any conclusion whether he's a franchise guy yet?
10:40No, they don't.
10:41I've even gotten texts from people.
10:43Yeah, Penix ain't the guy.
10:44I'm like, okay, if that's what you think, I'm not going to change your mind.
10:47I can't change your mind.
10:48What I can do is just, you know, acknowledge the simple fact that he's got a learning curve to get
10:54on.
10:55Do you trust the coaching staff?
10:56You have to.
10:58They're not firing Stefanski's crew after a year.
11:00They're probably not firing him after two years.
11:02You've got to wait and see.
11:03Is it absolutely frustrating and infuriating that we are sitting here and trending to miss the playoffs for a ninth
11:09consecutive season?
11:10As the Falcons are doing that and fans are upset about it?
11:12Yes, totally fair.
11:13You can be upset about it.
11:14You can be upset about it.
11:17It's not going to change the fact that they're not moving off of Penix.
11:20Penix will be here next year.
11:22He's going to be on the rock.
11:23I don't know if they're going to bring in a quarterback to compete with him.
11:26We have time to figure that out.
11:29We still have 11 games to figure that out.
11:3111.
11:32And a lot can change between now and then.
11:34Nobody's taking a stranglehold of the NFC South.
11:36It's still available for the Falcons to go out there and win.
11:40And speaking of frustrated fans, guys, people who sold their tickets to the Bears, they're allowed to.
11:49Is it an indictment on the team?
11:51Yes.
11:51Is it an indictment on the fan base?
11:53Sure.
11:54The Browns have been awful for years.
11:56No visiting team ever rules that stadium.
11:59Okay.
12:01You know, the PSL thing and everything, I get it.
12:03People trying to make their money back.
12:04I get it.
12:04I'm not saying anybody's wrong for selling their tickets.
12:06You can do whatever they want.
12:09But this is the reality you have to live with in Atlanta.
12:12Plus, Atlanta is a very transient city.
12:14You know, there's a lot of implants here.
12:17And there's a lot of implants?
12:19Transplants.
12:21You know what I meant.
12:22That was weird that I said that that way.
12:24Laugh at it in the comments section, please.
12:26There's a lot of transplants here.
12:27And so, yeah, it's a great city to come and visit.
12:29It's warm down here in the winter.
12:31So you get out of the freezing cold north.
12:33You come down here.
12:34You enjoy some good weather.
12:35You go catch a ball game.
12:36And you have a great time.
12:37Okay, great.
12:39That's going to happen routinely until you start to win more.
12:42That's it.
12:43No way around it.
12:44It's been happening for a couple of years now.
12:47I've been to Giants games here as a Giants fan in Atlanta.
12:50Guess what?
12:51Plenty of Giants fans there.
12:53The Giants haven't been that great either.
12:55It's a destination city.
12:57People will come here to watch games.
12:58They always have and they always will.
13:00The only way to do that is to win more.
13:02To stop them from happening is to win more.
13:04They got to do that.
13:05It's going to take time.
13:06And no one has any patience.
13:08And I understand that.
13:09And I'm not saying all of a sudden you should switch and have some patience.
13:12I understand if you don't.
13:13But let's just make sure your anger is placed in the right spot.
13:16Okay?
13:17At this point, the stadium being taken over, it's an entire organizational failure.
13:23From the owner on down.
13:26PSLs, you could argue it was a bad route to go down.
13:28It's not uncommon.
13:29A lot of franchises do it.
13:31It's the way of the gun, right?
13:34You could argue that it's the team on the field.
13:37You could argue it's the coaching staff.
13:39All of it's somewhat true to a certain extent.
13:42But it doesn't change the outcome, which is people will come here as visitors and watch their team play.
13:49I was at the Monday night game last year against Buffalo.
13:51And there was a ton of Buffalo fans in town.
13:55Okay.
13:57Happens.
13:57Happens all the time.
13:59But back to Penix.
14:00I just, I'm never going to convince anybody to have a realistic viewpoint of this whole thing.
14:06If you don't, your mind is not going to be changed.
14:09So there's not a lot of point in me trying to change your mind.
14:12And if you're watching this and thinking that I'm full of crap, but okay, that's your opinion.
14:17I know what reality is.
14:19Reality is that as long as he's healthy, he's going to continue to play.
14:22And as long as he is part of this organization, they're going to give him every chance to be successful.
14:29They have to.
14:32There's not a better plan out there.
14:34And for people who are looking towards the NFL draft, I think you're foolish already.
14:38Can you stop with that?
14:39Can we just finish the season first?
14:41Can we at least get eliminated from postseason before you start looking for the draft?
14:45I mean, you guys are way out there.
14:48You're absolutely nuts.
14:50So that's an exercise I want no part of, period.
14:55But Penix was not the reason you lost on Sunday.
14:57And making him the first reason, lazy.
15:00That's all it is.
15:01It's done by lazy people who are not critical thinkers.
15:04And that's the reality of it.
15:06All right.
15:07We have to get to the WNBA.
15:10The Dreamer in the finals.
15:11Did you guys know that?
15:12I did.
15:12We'll get to that coming up in a minute.
15:14First, time to hand out a shovel of wisdom.
15:17Brace yourselves, because it's time for the shovel of wisdom.
15:30Today, my shovel goes to the NFL.
15:35Well, in case you guys haven't noticed, the NFL is going over to France to play an NFL game this
15:40Sunday.
15:41And I'm not going to make this a political thing or turn it into that.
15:43But have you seen what is going on in France right now?
15:45The city is literally burning.
15:48Buildings that have survived World War II are being burned to the ground by rioters.
15:53And World War I and World War II, for that record.
15:56And the NFL is like, eh, no big deal.
15:58We're just going to go play a game there.
16:01I mean, you know, they better send over a ton of extra security.
16:04And the point of this shovel is that this always boils down to money.
16:08That's all it is.
16:09The NFL is not giving the money back to play that game there.
16:12It would take something monumental, and this feels monumental, and I think this is monumental enough for them to do
16:18it.
16:18But you can't put players and staff and personnel's security in jeopardy.
16:26You can't lock everybody down to the hotel the whole week.
16:28You can't.
16:28It's just not going to happen.
16:30And if something bad happens because of what goes on there, man, the NFL will never live it down.
16:36It's a roll of the dice, man.
16:37When we are at this stage where we are in the world, and you take chances with people's safety, things
16:42that are preventable, whether it's stuff that's going on, civil unrest, or it's weather, or whatever else it may be,
16:48or building structural concerns, any of that stuff.
16:52We are the most litigious society in the world.
16:54You are asking for a world of pain if you can prevent something from happening, and you choose not to.
17:01So they're going to play this thing in France, Saints and Steelers, okay?
17:06We will pray that nothing bad happens because it shouldn't.
17:09And that will bring us to our – speaking of bad things happening, that will bring us to our final
17:12point here on A to Z, the WNBA.
17:15Okay, and so I know this has been going on for a while, okay, because I follow the league and
17:22I pay attention, that teams and certain teams, they don't stay out there for the national anthem.
17:27And it was game one of the finals, game two of the finals as well, out in San Francisco with
17:31the Valkyrie and the Dream, and the players run off the court for the national anthem.
17:34I personally don't care.
17:37Players can do whatever they want.
17:38That doesn't bother me.
17:40And there has been no greater advocate in the world.
17:43It's maybe aggressive.
17:44There's no bigger advocate than me for not playing the national anthem before sporting events.
17:48I've said for years it's a waste.
17:49Don't do it.
17:50You don't need to do it.
17:51It's not necessary.
17:52No one's going to miss it if they don't do it.
17:54Half the people in the stadium don't pay attention anyway.
17:56I'm totally okay with you never playing the national anthem before a sporting event again.
18:00Here's the problem with the WNBA.
18:03They are routinely, once again, failing to enforce rules that they have on the books, failing to enforce rules that
18:11are written down,
18:12and they just willingly look in the other direction and turn a blind eye.
18:16That's my problem.
18:17There's a rule on the books that you have to be standing for the national anthem on the foul line
18:21or on the sideline in a posture that is respectful.
18:26So there's a rule that you have to be there.
18:27Now, the rule was suspended in 2017 for the rest of the season.
18:32The rule has never come off the books, and the rule has never been re-suspended.
18:37Teams just did it, and nobody bothered to stop it, and nobody bothered to take notice.
18:41And now that people are taking notice, it's incumbent on the league to have a response.
18:46It's incumbent on the league to address it because people are taking notice.
18:50Once again, though, this is what the WNBA's problem is.
18:54The attention has gone to things off the court.
18:57The attention has gone to things away from basketball.
19:00You routinely allow it to happen because you don't address it.
19:04If you addressed it and made a statement about it and told everybody,
19:08this is okay, we understand there's a rule in the books, we have not enforced it,
19:13we're not going to start now, we're going to look into removing the rule next year,
19:16okay, fine, explain it away.
19:19But it's not just this.
19:21It's the Asia Wilson incident with the fan in the stands.
19:23There is a rule in the books.
19:24You cannot enter the stands.
19:26Didn't bother to enforce it.
19:28The Breonna Stewart thing with the timeout and the semifinals,
19:32there's a rule in the books about it.
19:33Was not enforced.
19:34Was not addressed.
19:35It's just silence from the league continually.
19:39And it hurts the product.
19:41Once again, it goes away from the court in the game of basketball.
19:44It goes away from the athletes playing the game of basketball.
19:47It goes to things that are not related to the game.
19:50This is what the league has become.
19:51It's become a circus like this because the leadership has allowed it.
19:55That's the problem.
19:55It's not about the dream.
19:56Go dream.
19:57Win the whole thing.
19:58Cool.
19:59Angel Reese dumped 30 and 16 last night.
20:01Awesome.
20:04Nobody's talking about the 30 and 16.
20:06They're talking about the anthem.
20:07And that's the problem.
20:08And the league needs to fix that because we should be talking about Angel Reese's 30 and 16.
20:12We should be talking about her ascension as a player.
20:15But we're not doing that because the anthem is overriding it.
20:19But if you make a statement about it and you nip it in the bud immediately and you tell people
20:24what's going on, it ends like that.
20:28But the league never does it.
20:30And so they have this continual mess.
20:32And it's almost like they are willfully driving people away from paying attention because they make it a circus.
20:39Show some level of control.
20:41Show some level of leadership.
20:43And fix the problems that are plaguing your league so the game can be, the conversation could be about the
20:49game of basketball.
20:50It's really simple, WNBA.
20:53They're not going to get it right.
20:56All right.
20:56Make sure you guys, again, are subscribed here.
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21:17We'll be back with another episode before the Falcons get set to take on the 49ers this weekend.
21:22You guys have a great day.
21:23Don't do any crap from anybody.
21:24See ya.