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Can the Atlanta Falcons fix their offensive line and quarterback issues before Week 2? Grant McAuley and Mike Johnson dive deep into the numbers from the 20-13 loss against Aaron Rodgers and the Steelers. From Bijan Robinson’s 173 all-purpose yards to holding penalties and key turnover meltdowns, get the complete postgame verdict right here.
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00:01And welcome in to the Mercedes-Benz postgame show. I am Grant McCauley alongside Mike Johnson, the former Falcon, from
00:08our Atlanta Falcons Network studios in Midtown.
00:11Mercedes-Benz, the official luxury vehicle of your Atlanta Falcons.
00:15And Mike, we've been waiting for it for a while. Opening day is here. Opening day is done.
00:19And unfortunately for the Falcons, when it comes to the Steelers, this rivalry, they've had a lot of trouble with
00:24it over the years.
00:24But this was one of those games that it feels like we've got a lot of time to break into
00:29this and break it all down and all of those things.
00:31There were some opportunities that were left out there in a 20-13 loss to Pittsburgh in the opener.
00:36And obviously, again, we'll do everything we can to kind of get inside all of the numbers, all the things
00:42that we saw in this one.
00:43But it just felt like this was, despite everything, despite all the quarterback questions and so many other things leading
00:49up to this game,
00:51kind of an opportunity for the Falcons to steal one, no pun intended, up in Pittsburgh.
00:54Yeah, no, I think you're spot on.
00:57And Falcons fans aren't going to want to hear it, and Steelers fans probably don't either.
01:01But these are two pretty evenly matched football teams, honestly.
01:05When you look at what the outcome was and everything kind of going into it,
01:08and the hiccups that you've had at the quarterback position,
01:11and considering you were playing against a four-time MVP in Aaron Rodgers,
01:14just not able to make the plays when you really needed to.
01:17And there's a lot of different reasons for that.
01:19Penalties go into that.
01:20But obviously, you know, kind of shrinking the size of the playbook goes into that as well.
01:25But you knew that T.J. Watt was going to be a problem from the get-go.
01:28And he definitely turned out to be quite the issue for the Falcons' offense
01:31and ended up being, in the end, won the game for the Steelers.
01:34But, you know, a valiant effort for a number of different reasons.
01:36And, of course, we'll break down all the reasons for the seven-point loss as well.
01:40Well, it's not the T.J. Watt show, but it kind of was as far as defense is concerned for
01:45the Steelers.
01:45I believe I saw toward the tail end of the television broadcast
01:48that he was just the third player in NFL history with two sacks and an interception for a touchdown in
01:54the same game.
01:55So if that's the kind of thing that you're doing, pulling a rabbit out of your hat like that,
01:58and that's to say nothing of the talent that is T.J. Watt and the way that he's able to
02:02affect the game,
02:03yeah, that just kind of lets you know that they had a player that came in
02:06and made some really big plays when you needed them most on defense.
02:09And that's to take away nothing from the Atlanta defense, which I thought was pretty solid in this one.
02:13But that, of course, is not necessarily the whole story here.
02:15Yeah, no, and look, I don't know if anybody up front for the Atlanta offensive line played well.
02:20And that's one of the key points, you know, keys to victory for me coming out of the pregame show
02:25was talking about do not be out-physicaled.
02:27I don't think you were out-physicaled in most position groups.
02:31As a matter of fact, I think your secondary did a great job against D.K. Metcalf.
02:34I thought your defensive front played pretty well.
02:37But you were out-physicaled along the offensive line,
02:39and that's one of the things that you could not have going into this matchup.
02:43You returned four of the five starters.
02:44You felt decent about the right tackle spot in Jawan Taylor,
02:48and yet that's exactly what took over.
02:49It wasn't just Jawan Taylor.
02:51Everybody up and down the offensive line had their issues.
02:53And when you add in holding calls to that, add in penalties,
02:57now all of a sudden you put yourself in obvious passing downs,
02:59and that's when a guy like T.J. Watt can really go to eat.
03:02So things got sideways in a hurry in terms of whatever you thought the offensive game plan was going to
03:06be.
03:06You weren't able to really put that step forward when you're getting as many penalties as you are.
03:10Yeah, and you brought this up earlier, and again,
03:12it may not be what you want to hear in the midst of or in the aftermath of another loss,
03:16and a loss to start the season, a loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers,
03:20which has become, unfortunately, a little bit lopsided as far as this rivalry between these two teams,
03:25if you want to call it that, the head-to-head history.
03:27We'll go with that one.
03:28Atlanta drew the early lead with the first touchdown of the day,
03:31had that 7-3 lead in the first quarter,
03:33but then 10 unanswered points in the second quarter to take it to the half, 13-7,
03:38and there were only 6 points for Atlanta and 7 points for the Steelers in the second half.
03:42Nobody was lighting it up.
03:43Some plays were made that needed to be made, obviously, on the Pittsburgh side,
03:46and unfortunately, and Wes Durham actually did a very nice job of framing all of this up,
03:50the turnovers in this game.
03:51There were three of them, and they all led to touchdowns,
03:54and unfortunately, Atlanta just had one of those.
03:55They forced fumble before the B. John Robinson touchdown,
03:58but then there were two, count them two, and T.J. Watt was in the middle of one of them
04:02that turned into, from turnovers to touchdowns for the Steelers to kind of kickstart their offense,
04:07which, really, to be honest with you, again, to the point,
04:10the Atlanta defense didn't have a bad day today.
04:12Yeah, and you've got to take into account, you know,
04:14probably what the Steelers' thought process is going into this game.
04:16They're going, you know, we just can't lose it offensively.
04:19We're not going to go out there.
04:19You know, our defense should play well enough against Cooper Rush in this offense.
04:22We need to, you know, make sure that we don't misstep, and they almost did.
04:25But, you know, you also had the ball bounce your direction a couple times
04:28on Bajon Robinson fumbles.
04:30Yeah, that's true.
04:32And, I don't know, like I said, to me, it was two evenly matched teams
04:35minus a T.J. Watt and, you know, a Highsmith.
04:39Those guys, you know, and the way they were able to play the edge
04:41and really disrupt a lot of the things the Falcons were trying to do,
04:44we can talk and break down, you know, the passing concepts
04:47and the backfield action and the pistol and the shotgun and wide zone
04:50and all that other stuff.
04:51But if you're coming out and having to go second and 20,
04:54you know, there's really not a lot of things you can kind of do incrementally
04:58to try to make the offense work at that point.
04:59Cooper Rush is, at that point, going to get in the shotgun,
05:02and he's going to try to throw a screen.
05:03He's going to try to do different things, get the ball out of his hands quickly.
05:06And Pittsburgh knew that.
05:07Not only did they have the T.J. Watt interception,
05:09but how many batted-down passes?
05:11Maybe four?
05:12You know, a number of balls that were tipped at the line of scrimmage.
05:16So it's just hard to look at it and really have too many takeaways
05:20other than the fact that your offensive line didn't perform up to snuff,
05:23and that put Cooper Rush in a lot of bad situations.
05:26Yeah, I believe Cam Hayward had at least three of those batted-down passes
05:29along the line for the Steelers.
05:31Looking at Cooper Rush, 12-22, a touchdown, two picks, 143 yards.
05:34Aaron Rodgers, 24-40, so not exactly a surgical strike for him on this day.
05:39Did have the touchdown, 221 yards for him.
05:42Bajon Robinson, 83 yards on the ground and 21 carries.
05:45He also had eight receptions for 90 yards, including the only Atlanta touchdown,
05:49which, of course, happened back in that first quarter.
05:52Those were the numbers you would expect from a Bajon Robinson
05:56or love to see from him if you've got 173 all-purpose yards there.
06:00He certainly did his thing to affect the game.
06:02But as you mentioned, there were some things as far as ball security.
06:05One of them that might have gotten loose that you kind of look at Bajon
06:08as a little bit more so, and one of them that was just a flat-out good hit
06:11that knocked the ball loose.
06:12But, again, fortunately, Atlanta able to fall on it a couple of times.
06:15So the self-inflicted wounds, I guess, to use the phrase everybody loves,
06:18it could have been worse, but it certainly doesn't feel good
06:20in the aftermath either.
06:22So let's talk a little bit about the elephant in the room here,
06:24which is the quarterback situation for the Atlanta Falcons.
06:28Heading through the week, you believe it's going to be Tua Tungvaloa.
06:31Then he gets the oblique issue in the practice,
06:34and he is no longer available to you.
06:36Michael Penix had already been ruled inactive
06:38and was not going to be walking through that door.
06:40So all of a sudden, all the responsibility fell in the lap of Cooper Rush,
06:44who was signed just before the Falcons' open training camp
06:46because you had a quarterback competition that you weren't really sure
06:49which way it was going to go, but you thought you'd have one of these guys,
06:52and it turns out you had neither of them.
06:54Neither Tua nor Penix were able to start the season for you.
06:57So I feel like Cooper Rush in a lot of ways,
06:59and I'm not trying to make excuses for the guy,
07:01but it just kind of is what it is, especially at the 11th hour,
07:03was kind of handed and put into, for lack of a better term,
07:07almost a no-win situation for him.
07:09Yeah, and that's why I want to be careful in how I phrase the way we talk
07:13about this game because I don't believe Cooper Rush played well.
07:16Absolutely not.
07:17I don't necessarily believe that he did things that would lead to a winning game
07:21for a quarterback.
07:22But we almost knew that, right?
07:24Like we knew that kind of going in,
07:26that you didn't want to have to have Cooper Rush go win this football game.
07:29You had to have all the other parts of the offense step up.
07:32You had to have receivers make plays.
07:33You had to have Bajon be able to run the football,
07:35and the offensive line couldn't have the hiccups on the sacks,
07:38on the holding calls, on the false starts.
07:40And none of those things around Cooper Rush kind of came to fruition,
07:43where everybody else has to rise up around that quarterback spot,
07:46and you're down to your option that had two and a half days of practice at best
07:50to kind of get used to whatever the game plan was going to be.
07:55And so, again, do I think Cooper Rush played good?
07:57No.
07:57But I didn't expect Cooper Rush to be kind of the focal point of this.
08:01In 12 of 22, while on the surface you're going,
08:04oh, that's not very good.
08:06I would have never designed them to have to throw the ball more than they did today.
08:10You would never go in and say,
08:11hey, let's get 30 passing attempts, and Cooper Rush starts for 250.
08:15That was never going to be what the game plan was.
08:17So I think it's worth kind of keeping into focus
08:19what you should have asked Cooper Rush to do today.
08:21Right.
08:22On the flip side, you look at Aaron Rodgers through the ball 40 times.
08:24He is Aaron Rodgers.
08:25So we can pretty much end the conversation there,
08:27and I guess we can at this point.
08:28But with Cooper Rush, it was two interceptions,
08:31the batted-down passes as well.
08:32I think in some ways just the awareness in the pocket,
08:36kind of walking himself, backing himself into a sack
08:38with T.J. Watt on one of those plays, sacked four times for 25 yards there.
08:43Rating was 51.9 as far as that's concerned.
08:46If you're into that sort of thing, it's here on the box score.
08:49I'll throw it out to you anyway.
08:50But the rest of the numbers pretty much tell you the story.
08:52But again, just to go back to it,
08:54this was far from an ideal situation for the Atlanta Falcons,
08:56far from an ideal situation for Cooper Rush himself.
09:00And we'll see how the Falcons are going to manage this.
09:02Kevin Stefanski was asked about Tua Tungavailoa.
09:04Is this a day-to-day thing or a week-to-week thing?
09:06And his answer was, yes.
09:08So I guess we're going to kind of find out where this is going.
09:11But you know that with oblique injuries,
09:13I mean, you play the sport at the highest level
09:15and you can see across any sport,
09:16typically those are not a quick return.
09:18So this is just a situation for Atlanta at the quarterback spot
09:22that you were hoping to have some kind of continuity,
09:25if nothing else, and that simply has not happened.
09:27Yeah, and I think there was even the thought process out there.
09:29If Cooper Rush plays well enough today,
09:31does he get a start next week?
09:33I don't think that that happened, right?
09:34I think that whichever one, Michael Penix or Tua,
09:38whichever one is ready to go next week against the Carolina Panthers,
09:41you're probably going to let those guys get back to work.
09:43And again, truth be told, it doesn't change anything
09:48if the offense line does not play better.
09:50And I thought that that was a big-time exposure.
09:53I mean, you did a good job.
09:53I thought Kevin Stefanski and Tommy Reese did a good job
09:55chipping early in the game, leaving in Kyle Pitts,
09:58Bajon, Brian Robinson, Charlie Warner, whoever else.
10:01And yet, Pittsburgh answered that in the second half.
10:04You saw some interior spin moves.
10:06You saw guys kind of waiting back and not letting themselves get chipped.
10:09And that's really what leads to the T.J. Watt interception.
10:12So there's a number of different ways to slice it offensively.
10:15But in the end, if you don't have the big guys up front
10:17that play better, a better brand of football than they did today,
10:19then you're not going to win anyways.
10:20Yeah, Atlanta's receiving here.
10:22This is kind of a weird line to look at down the box score as well.
10:25Bajon Robinson was targeted 10 times at eight catches.
10:27The rest of the targets listed on here adds up to nine.
10:32You've got four targets for Drake London.
10:33That's it in a four-quarter game.
10:35That obviously doesn't necessarily get the ball toward one of your better playmakers.
10:40But, of course, we can kind of track this back to what did this playbook look like
10:43once it had to evolve when you no longer had the guys,
10:47at least one of the guys, you were expecting to be running this offense.
10:50Yeah, I made the point in pregame talking about it.
10:52I was like, you know, nobody knows Cooper Rush strength and weaknesses
10:55like Mike McCarthy coaching for five years in Dallas.
10:57But I also don't know that anybody has more experience putting together
11:01a short-term game plan than Kevin Stefanski
11:03because he's had to do it so many times over the course of the last five seasons
11:07up in Cleveland with one quarterback leaving and one getting injured
11:10and whatever else you had going on up there.
11:12So, you know, it's just frustrating to say the least.
11:16When you talk about, what did you say, four catches to anybody other than Bajon Robinson,
11:20that is unbelievable.
11:22I mean, that's hard to stomach.
11:24You expect, you know, Kyle Pitts has a catch or Zachariah Branch
11:28or some of the other pieces.
11:30You just couldn't get much going.
11:31There was a number of good play calls, but when you look at your most explosive plays,
11:35there were undoubtedly Bajon Robinson in the flat
11:37and him being able to turn the ball upfield and get some things going.
11:40Yeah, four targets for Drake London.
11:41It was three for Jahan Dotson and then one for Zaccheaus and one for Pitts as well.
11:47So not a whole lot to go around there as far as those were concerned.
11:50Obviously, you want to try to get the ball to Bajon.
11:52Who wouldn't want to try to get it to him?
11:54He's one of the most dynamic players in the league, but it's not a one-man show, of course,
11:58and there's a lot of different factors that went into this loss for the Falcons.
12:0120-13, the final score.
12:03Steelers take it up in Pittsburgh.
12:05We've got a whole lot more to get to here on the Mercedes-Benz postgame show.
12:09We will talk a little bit more about the quarterback situation,
12:12and by a little bit, I mean a lot bit.
12:13We'll also hear from Dave Archer, who will be in the Falcons locker room
12:17with Kevin Stefanski and others as we continue, once again,
12:2020-13, Steelers over the Falcons in the opener,
12:22and we'll continue on the Mercedes-Benz postgame show right here
12:25on the Atlanta Falcons Radio Network.
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