- 11 minutes ago
Zero points. Four interceptions. A 16-0 shutout in Tampa. Grant McAuley and Mike Johnson react to an absolute nightmare in the rain for Michael Penix Jr. and the Atlanta Falcons. Hear Penix's raw postgame comments with Dave Archer and why Mike Johnson says Falcons fans need to stop speaking in absolutes about their young QB.
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00:00Welcome back again to the Mercedes-Benz Post Game Show
00:02here on the Atlanta Falcons Radio Network.
00:04I'm Grant McCauley alongside former Falcon Mike Johnson.
00:0616-0 the final score.
00:08All those points belonging to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers
00:11who top the Atlanta Falcons here in Week 8.
00:14Both teams now 3-5, so the breakdown, if you will,
00:17of the NFC South is something we'll get into a little bit later.
00:20Nobody's running away with this thing.
00:22The Panthers not having a fun time, and neither are the Saints.
00:25So it'll be interesting to see the war of attrition
00:27ahead of us over the next 10 or so weeks.
00:29We'll get to that a little bit later, though.
00:31This one, a very tough one for the Falcons.
00:33Really nothing going right for them, offensively speaking.
00:35And at the center of that, obviously, is going to be your quarterback play,
00:38which for Michael Penix, one of the more forgettable games of his young career.
00:42Four interceptions for him.
00:43A career worse as the Falcons are shut out by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers
00:47down at Raymond James Stadium.
00:49We're going to send it back down there where Dave Archer caught up
00:51with the Atlanta quarterback.
00:54Well, to say the conditions were about as brutal as they could possibly be, Mike,
00:58tell me about just trying to operate, especially early on in the game.
01:03Yeah, it just wasn't clean.
01:05It's got to be better.
01:06We've got to play better.
01:07Obviously, we knew what conditions we were in early on in the game,
01:11so we've got to figure it out and put the ball in the end zone some way.
01:15Well, tell me about that and just trying to grip the football.
01:18I've done a little bit of it.
01:19I don't know that I've been in that kind of situation.
01:22Obviously, it wasn't.
01:23I mean, Baker had a tough time gripping the football.
01:25He only threw it three times in the game.
01:26Yeah, I mean, man, we've got to adjust.
01:30We've got to adapt and adjust, and they did that better than us today.
01:34When the other teams end up with the football, obviously,
01:36from a quarterback perspective, that's not what you're looking for.
01:39Your thought process on that as far as eliminating mistakes
01:42and things like that, I guess you continue to learn.
01:44Yeah, that's the biggest thing, especially whenever you've got bad conditions
01:47and obviously the conditions aren't in your favor.
01:50You've got to protect the ball.
01:51I didn't do that today.
01:52That's the reason we lost.
01:54A little shot of adrenaline, you hit Jahan on the sideline.
01:58He makes the big play.
01:59You get it down to red zone.
02:00And all of a sudden, you look up, and you've still got time on the clock.
02:02You know, you're only two score down.
02:04Tell me about the process there as you try to put the ball in the end zone.
02:07Yeah, got to protect the ball.
02:09I think I threw a pick on that drive, too.
02:10So you've got to protect the ball and take advantage of the opportunity
02:15when we have them.
02:17So, yeah, that's up.
02:19Yeah, and last thing for you, you've been playing in a state position a long time.
02:24How much does your – do you let it creep into your confidence at all
02:27because you played so confidently last week?
02:29Does this hurt you at all in this game, just a learning process?
02:32No, it hurt because I'm back at home, and I was in front of a whole bunch of family.
02:36But outside of that, man, it's football.
02:39You're going to have good days.
02:40You're going to have bad days.
02:41I'm going to shake back for sure.
02:42I hear you, man.
02:43Thank you for your time.
02:43Appreciate it.
02:44All right, it was Falcons quarterback Michael Penix with our own Dave Archer
02:47right there.
02:47We heard Kevin Stefanski a little bit earlier say he's not really concerned.
02:50Penix is going to bounce back.
02:51You heard Dave ask Michael about his confidence there, and, you know,
02:54he was able to, I think, succinctly describe how exactly he felt about this game
02:59throughout the course of that conversation but didn't do a good job
03:01protecting the football.
03:02That's the A number one thing that you take away from this game as far as what
03:06didn't go right for the Falcons offense.
03:08Yeah, and you and I – I expect Coach Stefanski to say that because you and I have had
03:12the conversation numerous times that there is really one massive goal for this team,
03:16and that's to diagnose and figure out what you have in Michael Penix throughout the
03:21season.
03:21And, you know, you start kind of thinking off the tracks in terms of that, and you
03:26bring yourself back to that.
03:27You have to figure out what Michael Penix is in terms of the future of this franchise.
03:32And you can hear a little bit of, you know, a slight bit of emotion in his voice there
03:36as he's talking to Arch.
03:37And you know that he's a Tampa Bay guy, you know he wanted to play well today, you know
03:40he probably wishes the conditions were better than they were, but he does a nice job pointing
03:46at himself in the mirror.
03:47Hey, that sucked.
03:48You know, it wasn't good enough.
03:49But we have to adapt, we have to overcome, we have to do different things.
03:53And yet he was not able to do that.
03:55And I know that, you know, Alex Van Pelt and Tanner Engstrand and that group that's
03:59around him inside that locker room, inside those meetings rooms, will get back to the
04:02drawing board and they'll look at footwork.
04:04They'll diagnose the plays and everything else, but it just felt like nothing worked.
04:08And the run game stuff is not on Michael Penix.
04:11Remember, nothing worked for Baker Mayfield today either, right?
04:14It's just that their offensive line, the run game, credit to Zach Robinson, the unlikeliest
04:20of people to give credit to in this one.
04:23They were able to kind of get after it up front and, you know, do what they needed to do
04:26on the ground.
04:27So frustrating for Mike, obviously, you know, that's not the product he wants to put
04:32forth, but, you know, we're still a long way to go in this football season.
04:36And I like Coach DeFansky saying, hey, he's going to bounce back.
04:38Yeah.
04:39And you're really counting on him to do that.
04:40And there have been signs that Michael Penix can do a lot of great things for this club.
04:44I mean, again, you can't ignore the conditions in this game.
04:48You also can't ignore the turnovers in this.
04:49When he came in, having played six games thus far, having thrown one interception to nine
04:54touchdowns.
04:55That was the ratio in the first six starts for Penix.
04:57This was a day that was clearly not the best.
05:00He threw a pair on back-to-back possessions.
05:02So you knew it was going to get a little bit weird.
05:04And that's what, in fact, it did.
05:05And, you know, there's a challenge to be on points.
05:08And the airmail to Kyle Pitts also, I brought this up earlier, but I just kind of look back
05:11on the different plays and different, you know, the ability to execute and things that
05:15Penix was just talking about there.
05:16It's just, I got to be better.
05:18There are some plays out there aside from the interceptions that I'm sure that he would like
05:22to have back.
05:23And that one, certainly one of them getting down inside the end of the red zone and knocking
05:27on the door of the goal line late in the game and not being able to get some points there.
05:30That's another thing.
05:31They're going to have to just spend some time looking at it from an execution standpoint.
05:33And you and I have had this conversation about speaking in absolutes.
05:37I think we have to do that as a fan base and stop speaking in absolutes after every game.
05:41Oh, Michael Penix is great.
05:42He's the future.
05:43Right.
05:43Oh, Michael Penix, you know, doesn't have a good game.
05:46All of a sudden the Falcons are looking for the next quarterback.
05:48And it's just, and really it's not a this year thing.
05:51It's not even a Michael Penix or Kevin Stefanski thing.
05:53That's something that has haunted this franchise for years where, hey, this is the guy, this
05:58is not the guy.
05:59And, you know, these conversations take nuance.
06:01Even going back to Chicago Bears game when Penix wasn't great, it's like he wasn't protected.
06:05You got blitzed all day.
06:06You weren't able to do anything about it.
06:07You'll look at this one.
06:08It'll be what it is on the stat sheet.
06:10But then you'll remember back and go, yeah, it was mostly in a monsoon.
06:13So it just is what it is.
06:14You want to be able to see your quarterback step up to the plate, play well, deliver victories
06:19for his team.
06:19But neither quarterback was going to do that today.
06:22And unfortunately, Michael Penix's decision, you know, had the ball going back in the other
06:26direction.
06:26Yeah, they did.
06:27And it happened several times.
06:28Nearly happened a fifth time.
06:29He mentioned that as they had just gotten the big play from Jahan Dotson.
06:33Then nearly, I believe, another interception immediately followed that.
06:36And then the Falcons gave it up on downs, weren't able to score there.
06:39Tampa gets the ball back and ultimately able to salt this game away.
06:4316-0 being the final score in this one.
06:45We brought this up earlier because we talked a lot about the quarterback play of Michael Penix.
06:49But Baker Mayfield, who had missed some time with a thumb injury, didn't really throw the
06:53ball a lot in his return, threw it even less today.
06:560-3 in passing is a wild stat to have for a quarterback that plays an entire NFL football
07:03game.
07:03It hadn't happened in 52 years.
07:051974, the last time that a team won a game without completing a pass.
07:10I've been around sports a long time.
07:11I've covered one that is probably more stuck on numbers than any other sport can possibly be.
07:17That's one of the craziest statistics that I've seen in recent memory.
07:20To not complete a pass and win an NFL football game in the year 2026 is pretty wild.
07:25Yeah, it goes back to a conversation myself and Bo Morgan were having in the pregame show.
07:31The keys to victory were hit.
07:32Number two was make Baker prove that he can throw it.
07:35And that really had a couple of things in mind.
07:38First of all, get out front and have a good first quarter.
07:41You've been so bad in the first quarter.
07:42It's like, make the other team play catch-up rather than you playing catch-up the entire
07:47time.
07:47Also, Baker's thumb, the ability to grip the football in the rain.
07:51Make Baker prove he can throw it.
07:52And we still don't know.
07:54He threw it for 50, 60 yards last week against Carolina.
07:56Yep.
07:57Threw for zero today.
07:58We still don't know how Baker Mayfield's thumb is.
08:00And credit to them, two dominant victories without really having to put the ball in the
08:04air.
08:04That tells you kind of about the grit of their football team over the last couple of weeks.
08:07Yeah, and it's funny the way, and not funny, ha-ha, but just maybe funny in a strange way
08:12that this season can go with the highs and lows.
08:14It looked like for the Buccaneers before last week, before that decisive win, that maybe
08:19their season was going to be heading in the wrong direction, and they were just going to
08:22be a non-factor in the NFC South.
08:24And now here, two weeks later, we're talking about a Buccaneers team that has just as much
08:28of a fighting chance as anybody else in this division, at least right now.
08:31Carolina, three and four.
08:32Tampa Bay and Atlanta, both three and five.
08:34New Orleans is two and five.
08:35We'll get into that a little bit more later.
08:37But I say this just in contrast of where the Falcons are slash were a couple of weeks
08:42ago and where the Tampa Bay Buccaneers find themselves now.
08:46Falcons lose their first two, win the next two, then proceed to lose two more, then bounce
08:51back, beat the 49ers, and now take an L down in Tampa Bay here.
08:55It's just been this roller coaster of a season thus far for the Falcons.
08:58There's a lot of different things that you can look into as reasons why it's happening or
09:02reasons why things are not happening.
09:04But it just hasn't been that nice, consistent flow yet for the Falcons.
09:08It just seems like they've left a couple out there here in the early portion of the season,
09:11and you just hope that doesn't come back to haunt them on what seems like, at least for
09:14now, maybe a semi-favorable portion of the schedule coming through.
09:19Yeah.
09:19And for the Falcons, because this division is an absolute mess in the standings, and Tampa
09:24really at three and five, kind of in the driver's seat, even though technically, I guess they're
09:27not in first place, they've got a tiebreaker against Carolina having played one more game.
09:32But the Falcons have played three division games, and you're one and two.
09:35And the two losses were two of the biggest clunkers you've had all season.
09:40You didn't score any points in either one of those losses against Carolina or against
09:43Tampa.
09:43So it just kind of is what it is.
09:45It's unfortunate.
09:46But you have to remind yourself, there's a long way to go in this one, no doubt.
09:50There is, and there's a long way to go here on the Mercedes-Benz Post Game Show.
09:52We will send it back down to Tampa Bay.
09:54We'll hear more from the Falcons' locker room.
09:56We'll also break down a lot of the things that went wrong for the Falcons on this one,
10:00and of course, start looking ahead to the game in Madrid next week.
10:03Today's game brought to you in part by...
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