 Welcome to another edition of the Falcons Auto presented by AT&T I'm Derek Rackley and I'm back with my fellows Dave Archer and DJ Shockley and fellows we get to talk about some actual action on the field and I'm not talking about preseason action I'm talking about regular season action the Atlanta Falcons they end up dropping their season opener to the Philadelphia Eagles 32 to 6 yes that's not the start that we all look for and we'll dive into all of that and say hello to the fellas DJ how you doing my man hey rack man it's always like I mentioned great to be on with you guys every single week and I'm glad we got some football to talk about obviously not in the fashion we want not having a W but hey man I'm here I'm glad I'm excited and good to see you fellas Arch we will talk about some positives and negatives that came out of the game but I know you've got a chance to be back up in the booth you saw the action you went back and watched it again but you know what it's still exciting to talk about some regular season football yeah no question about it this was a very important weekend for our country 9-11 of course was Saturday the NFL rolled out the carpet and really did a phenomenal job of honoring those we lost almost 3,000 lives we lost that day in 9 at 9-11 and then their tribute to those people the tribute to the families that still have to endure and have to go through that but I thought the national anthem which they played simultaneously all around the league it was the same national anthem super it was phenomenal with the background of the of the first responders and all the people that were there that day and tried to save lives did save lives and it ultimately may have lost their lives as well but just a really cool tribute and it it's just another reminder the NFL gets it and really does an amazing job with those type of situations yeah it's a great point Dave I think that all the situations that we've had I mean I think about in my last 20 years since I entered the league in 2000 all the way up through now the NFL does an outstanding job with with situations like this unfortunately some of them have a negative tone but boy do they find a way to make it positive and really shed some some good light on it and then really get people to think and remember about what happened in our country 20 years ago so that's a great point there are chart here's the rundown for this show we will get some initial reactions to the game this past weekend we will dive into it a little bit more we'll talk about some new faces but some of the same issues that we saw in previous years and then me and DJ and Arch will get into a little bit of story time and kind of reflect on our own careers on whether or not we had some good or bad opening week games and then we'll kind of spin it forward to some of the bigger surprises that we saw throughout the league this this past weekend and then of course we'll take a look ahead next week and dive into that match up a little bit more but first of all let's go ahead and get some quick reactions to this game and arch I'm gonna go right back to you again this is kind of like a 30 second to a one-minute synopsis of what you saw on the field this past weekend and the loss of the Eagles yeah really not going to take me long here rack I thought that there was an outstanding beginning to this thing there are some really good positive you can take out of this I know the Falcon fan is not going to look at it that way 32 6 is all you ultimately see and that's really all you ultimately should take in but there are some things that you could look at that I think are building blocks but ultimately not good enough yeah and DJ what are your kind of initial reactions after you saw the game I mean it got off to a great start but then the finish wasn't so good but what were some of your initial reactions coming away from the game the first thing was this is game one a lot of people expected I think a lot in this first game is with a new staff a bunch of new faces a lot of things going on inside this organization everybody expected game one to just be blown out the water and you're scoring all these points and stopping everybody it takes time and I think it's if you watch football if you understand how this works it's going to take time for guys in certain spots coaches to understand what guys can do and I think it's something that we I don't think fans should overblow about it just being a you lost 32 6 yet that matters the way you play matters but it's game one you got 16 more chances to get this thing right and knowing Arthur Smith he's gonna find a way to get these guys playing at a higher level and you know it's just week one and I think we'll be better going into next week you know guys I know we go back shoot it was probably four or five months to a previous podcast that we did and it was shortly after we got a new general manager and head coach and I think some of the media was asking those guys do you see this as a rebuild or a team that's wet ready to win right now and that's a difficult question to answer when you're a new head coach and a general manager because you want people to believe that you know what you're doing and that you're gonna get this team to win right away but to DJ's point it's not always like that it's not like you can bring in a new GM a new head coach and so many new faces and go ahead and just blow out your first opponent so you're right DJ I agree with you it is the first week of the season there is a lot of football left but on the flip side that's definitely not the result that the head coach the general manager or any of those 53 guys on that active roster expected from this past weekend so yeah they learn from it they put their tape on they put the tape on and then they just get better but let's dive into it a little bit more because you know we need to kind of dissect it a little bit we talked about it coming into the season new head coach new general manager new schemes we had the number four overall pick drafted arguably the most athletic and best tight end that we've seen in I don't know how many years but yet we ended up losing 32 to 6 so DJ I'm gonna come right back to you let's expand in this a little bit more in some of the things that you saw that contributed to this loss but maybe some also some optimism that you saw from the game as well you know what I think me and Archie and Ricky as well we were talking about before we came on and Archie had a chance to talk to coach and you know I love to get this you know you know take on what coach says and I think the number one thing he talked about and the one thing I think we've seen from day one is the attention to detail but also being disciplined and I think when you turn on the tape or you watch this game there were moments in the game where the Falcons were not disciplined enough and you're talking about little things as far as procedural stuff that happens pre snap and that's not something that you look at it's okay this is the reason why you lost the game but it's a part of it but it's also a big part of you becoming a better football team is not putting yourself in those bad spots not putting yourself in first and long or second and long we're having a positive play and then it turns around and you have a holding pillow you have something that happens pre snap that forces you to not be able to stay on track especially offensively so some of those things you look back on the game you say okay those things hurt you those things are part of the ballgame that you want to absolutely clear up and you got to find ways to do it but positively I think about ours talked about we first came on is you start the game off and you look really good offensively I mean you're you're distributing the ball all over the place you run the ball think you have 86 yards in the first quarter of rushing the football that is what I think everybody expected to see was the multiplicity is offensively but do a lot of things I mean you talk about the first play of the game and it looks like just a routine completion of Calvin really but you come out in that 22 personnel where you got two tight ends you got both backs in the backfield and it looks like hey we can run the football and it looks like a power formation but you end up play action it you get your your tight instance on the backside you have a tight split by Calvin really here comes a nice big completion to start the ball game you aggressive those are things that you can build on because you can see what you can do with this kind of offense with these type of players in these type of situations so there's tons to build on especially on both sides of the ball but I think the biggest thing I take away is the the attention to detail of some of the things you do pre snap that hurts you when you're trying to get your drive started or trying to get your team into a better spot and DJ just talked about some of the positives and arch let's just let's kind of go down that same line because before we came on you went back and you watched the tape and you said you know what there was some really good things that came out of it so why don't you tell us some of the things that you saw either when you called the game initially or when you went back and looked at the tape that's showing you some promise from from this point on well in particular we knew Philly coming in was really good up front their defensive front is probably as good as there is across the league not saying they're the best but they're certainly in the conversation is the team that had 49 sacks a year ago they were salty against the run so you wanted to come out and you want to establish the run game shock mentioned the opening play I thought that was a nice little ice breaker to say hey wait a minute we're not just going to run it we're going to throw it got riddly the football and so now let's go run the football and they came off the ball I saw tape where a number of players Jalen Mayfield Matt Hennessy Chris Lindstrom those interior three who I think ultimately are going to be the keys to whether you're going to be able to move the football both through the air and on the ground the interior three offensive linemen had Fletcher Cox Javon Hargrove Hassan Richway had him eight 10 yards off the ball blowing them off the ball where Cordero Patterson and Mike Davis refined cutback lanes run in the football shock talked about 86 yards the first quarter they had 110 yards and they were rushing at halftime okay you're on your way to a 200 yard day and we know that if you lay 200 yards on somebody on the ground in a game you have kicked their rear end yeah now it didn't get there and Philly made some adjustments which is part of the negative where you've got to figure out don't let that change the equation change in the second half but when you start talking about the things you want to do in the capabilities you have the capabilities do that red zone deficiencies reared their ugly head again you talked about that rack some of the things some of the same problems we've had in the past that's a problem we've had in the past part of it had to do with the lack of attention to detail lined up wrong on it on a on a formation jumped off side all of a sudden you're back up against the chains those are things you have to eliminate but if you're looking for stuff to hang your head on go back and look at the first half of this game this game with nine seconds to go in the first half is seven to six that's what the score was in the game and you look up it's thirty two six you think what the hell happened we got a rear end skip yeah this was a game through the half and you let it get away from you in the second half some because of Philly made some adjustments and number two the quarterback for Philadelphia was a difference in the game yeah and and I'll just chime in on a couple of little things that I saw and then we'll move forward the things that I liked is you guys talked about Mike Davis and Cordero Patterson I saw some flashes that there's something to be excited about that running game for the Atlanta Falcons is going to be in probably a good better shape than it's been the last couple of years you saw some explosiveness and obviously you got some speed with the change up of Patterson and I like that with the intent that Mike Davis runs obviously he's a bigger strong bat he's going to run people over but he's also got the quickness to kind of skate through some holes so when he did see those he took advantage and you guys talked about they ran the football pretty well and I think that there's some promise for the rest of the year here's what I didn't care for the inconsistencies on the line of scrimmage and I'm not going to say offensively or defensive I'm going to say both of them there was just too many times where it was like good play good play bad play pocket collapsing got to get rid of the football yeah good play defense bad play way too many yards way too many yards Jalen Hertz getting outside of the pocket picking up a first down and look too easy right he didn't even really get touched until he went out of bounds and I think a lot of that starts up front granted that's the that's the benefit that you have when you have a mobile quarterback he's got the ability to get outside the pocket extend plays pick up first downs but I feel like that's going to have to get short up if the Falcons are going to take the next step specifically on the defensive side of the ball so we talked a little bit about the good and the bad let's take a step back here guys and arch I want to go to you we're going to do a little story time here we're going to talk about maybe some of the worst opening week situations that we've had maybe it's been in the pros arch in the back to high school so I hope you thought about it a little bit arch but I thought way too much about memories of a week one that you kind of wish you forgot but we're going to make you remember it right now well as it turns out the Falcons opening day loss today or the this weekend was the worst since 1987 which is a game I played in against Tampa no we got our rear ends handed to us Steve DeBurg threw for 335 and five touchdowns and we've gotten blown out by Tampa down in Tampa to start the season off I'd like to say that season ended well it did not we did not get much better as the season went along I can go back to college opening game of the my college my senior year Chuck Long in the Iowa Hawkeyes come to town they blow us out we got ripped there and the season didn't we got about four or five hundred I think that year I will say that high school we lost to a team that we could never beat in high school press the high school in Little South Eastern Idaho beat us down a 28 to six we came back and won every game after that and made it into the playoffs now we didn't go win the whole thing but we made it into the playoffs so we did not let so I had to go all the way back to high school back to find a good memory about getting my butt kicked in the opening game but I found one there it is there it is you heard it sometimes you got to go back to high school but you can come out on the wrong side of the opening game and you can still get back to the post season so there's the promise DJ I know you want a lot of games at Georgia so maybe maybe it's not going to be your college yeah it ain't gonna be that right it ain't gonna be that right the dogs are good your turn oh but well first off Arch I'm sorry I was still ringing their ugly head in 2021 to the to the cyclones thanks for reminding me no but uh I really have like you mentioned I didn't have many in college uh didn't have many in high school but I did have one my second year here with the Falcons Arch who remember this really well 2007 uh we go on the road to Minnesota uh we end up losing this game 24-3 AP uh rushes for a hundred yards in the game he has like a 60 yard touchdown it was his first game in his career yes he bought out we had um my man Joey Harrington was was a quarterback at the time he got sacked like six times uh we we had a couple of interceptions in the game both of them went for pick sixes it was just not a good day and uh to Arch's kind of point we didn't really end the season pretty well we ended up 79 that year well I think everybody remembers what happened uh that year where I coach uh leaving us and all that uh but at the end of that year uh we did draft a guy who is still putting up numbers to this day which is Matt Ryan so uh obviously that season led to us getting uh the franchise guy and my man Matty Ice so uh boy that is a great spin on that now like we had a horrible year so we can get Matt Ryan third overall that is that is positive belly right there it was not uh it was not the year we wanted but I guess from an organizational standpoint it worked out pretty well that we got Matt uh obviously that meant I wasn't gonna play anymore because you know they paid Matt a lot of money and he was the guy uh so I just had to make sure I found my way on the backup part but it was fun though man it was good I mean that was a a tough day for his rack uh obviously not a good day I can't wait to hear the worst day of your first ever bring it right let's go interesting because because I was with Atlanta for the in the early 2000s and and and Arch can tell you I mean DJ you were still in college at this time but like we're okay you know it was like we had some losing seasons and we went to the playoffs a couple of times but I had to go back and look at it because I'm not like a personal statistician so I don't remember all these things but I actually went four and two in my six years with Atlanta in opening games granted Willie went to the playoffs a couple of times but still four and two is pretty good and Arch might remember this but there was a year is 2001 and I'm going to give you the date and obviously people are going to understand it's September 9th 2001 I think everybody knows what happened a couple days after that but we went out to San Francisco and we were playing the 49ers and we were up 13 to 3 going into the fourth quarter and if I tell you we lost the game that kind of tells you how it goes they ended up tying it up in the fourth quarter we went to overtime they kick a field goal we end up losing the game 16 to 13 and anytime you're winning going into the fourth quarter after you had to travel all the way across the country oh that's a bad right come back handed you're not in a good because you've got a five hour flight that you've got to reflect on how you'd lost the game in the fourth quarter and nobody's happy don't just get up to use the bathroom and they're not even making eye contact when they look at people that's a long flight brutal right there that's a long flight and as I mentioned obviously we know what happened in this country two days after that loss was was pretty awful but that was that was not a fun time but to your point you know you can learn from these lopsided losses and and you just you got to take it one game at a time i it's interesting because i heard terry font know this morning he came and spoke to the school that my daughters go to and he talked about staying in the moment and it's interesting that he mentioned that because you can apply that in the game like that seems like it's a phrase guys it's thrown around all the time right stay in the moment okay yes stay in the moment i got it coach but like dj you talked about the formation issue in the red zone right if you stay in the moment and focus on exactly what you have to do that doesn't happen if you start getting ahead of yourself oh this is my release on this player i got to block this guy and you don't pay attention to the little things as far as just lining up that can make a big difference in the complexion of a game and coming away with a field goal when there should have been two touchdowns on those drives was pretty big um so it's because sometimes it's interesting would stay in the moment players need to do that all right let's let's take a step back we're gonna let's look at the nfl here because there was some interesting games throughout the course of week one and in arch i'm going to let you start what was your biggest surprise of week one i've got a couple that come right to the top of my mind but i want to hear what yours is well the green bay game certainly was one in jacksonville where new orleans was displaced because of hurricane ida so they had been in dallas practicing and then they went over to jacksonville i don't know a few days before to play this game jacksonville on the road in at houston so they had a chance to use that facility green bay comes down and there's been so much talk about green bay and and erin rogers and the discourse between the the front office and him and all that kind of stuff but you knew that this team had been to back to back afc championship games and are in odds on favor to go back again this year yeah and new orleans who took them apart a year ago took them apart again jamis winston threw the ball like nine times and through five of them for touchdowns or whatever it was he was outstanding obviously that's that's the obvious one i'm going to give you one that's a little bit more off the radar though i'm going to give you the the win by the arizona cardinals against the tennessee titans titans team no longer with arthur smith is offensive coordinator struggled on offense and this is a team that is very much the same team that was a playoff team a year ago kyler murray in that uh that group for arizona and on the defense side they took the titans apart i thought that was a really impressive win for a team that i think a lot of people kind of fancy is a dark horse in the nfc in the arizona cardinals in a really tough nfc west yeah i mean for me i got a couple of them and obviously that that green bay one was was mind boggling the fact that if you went into that ballgame and you said hey jamis winston will out duel and rogers and he will have the intercepts i mean and rogers throwing interceptions in the red zone that's just something he never does to see that come out was uh mind boggling for sure the one that really comes to mind me is the game as we record this is tuesday last night the game with the raiders and baltimore was pretty crazy i mean a lot of people talked about ken lamar take the next step would he be able to be the team throwing the football i did i thought he did it both with his arms and his legs and that ballgame had a chance to win i know you had a couple fumbles late in that ballgame to kind of help the raiders get that win but it was an unbelievable i thought performance for a guy who had just lost his top two backs coming into the first game of the season and was able to kind of put that team on his back and give him a chance to to win that ballgame was pretty spectacular for me and the other one was out in la man watching stafford go against that bears defense and kind of carve them up because i think a lot of people thought that bears defense would be one of the tops in the league and he went out and threw for you know three hundred and three touchdowns and obviously that that connection would him and make vey is something that everybody's looking forward to watching but i thought that the bears defense would hold up a little bit better you know just because of how good they were supposed to be coming into that ballgame and they still will be probably pretty good but that was a outstanding performance from from la in the range he did their rack as he went and found a bulldog quarterback it just so happened i don't know how that happened unbelievable how that happens at some point a coincidental full circle a coincidental man i don't know it is hey i will to your point though i will tell you this past week and i called the ohio state origan game and the guy that i worked with my play by play guy was dan miller who's the play by play guy for the detroit lions so we started talking about matt stafford a little bit and obviously him not being a part of the lions and he was just telling me that how good matt stafford is but he never had a defense to help him out right it was just like he had to keep scoring points and scoring points and it was never enough because he didn't have a defense and now look he goes out and he gets one beast of a defense playing behind him and he's still playing at an extremely high level one other game that i thought was interesting i'll go really quick here was houston and jacksonville not to say that jacksonville should have won a game right but the fact that they had the number one overall pick and trevor laurence take in the field for the first time in an nfl uniform and a houston texans had a quarterback that was not named ashawn watson playing for them and they still ended up throwing 30 it's throwing up 37 points there four for six in the red zone so offense looked like it was still really good without the sean watson playing that quarterback position so houston texans get off to a one and oh start let's not talk about uh successful red zills are just i mean wrack let's leave successful red zones out of this i mean come on we'll be done yeah okay uh okay so if that's the case we got to talk about sort red zone okay let's let's go back to the falcons and let's spin this ahead all right so what can the falcons take away from this loss to get better and become a better team in week two and week six and week 10 dj i'm gonna come back to you and where do you feel like the future of this team looks like right now well i think anytime you have a ball game in which where you come in feeling good about yourself or you feel good about the product that's about to come on the field and you lose in the fashion that you do it kind of refocuses you early it gives you a different mindset going into week two that when you turn on that tape that's something you don't ever want to see again i mean it's one of those things where if your little brother or your big brother is beating you up and uh every day you come home you you find a way to say hey this not gonna happen again i think this is where the falcons is after week one you say hey let's go out and let's not make sure this occurrence is never put on tape again let's make sure that we're the more physical team let's make sure we're in the team that's not having 13 14 penalties in a ball game and we hurt ourselves i think because this happens so soon it happens so early it gives guys a chance to see exactly where they are from jump street and now you go into the next ball games feeling as though okay i cannot make the same mistake twice i can't go into the next ball game doing the same things i did because ultimately i saw what happened when that happened you lose ball games you hurt your team you're not in position to win games and we gotta be honest there's a lot of excitement around this team we talked about terry fauna we talked about author smith we talked about some of the new faces there are a lot of fans are excited to see this ball club there are a lot of people who expect big things to happen and i still believe this can happen for this ball club even though it's just week one but putting that stuff on tape it reminds you that that's something i don't want to see again because these guys have to look at themselves in the mirror and say hey we can't allow this to happen again arch same thing to you where do you see this team going in the next two weeks six weeks eight weeks is the twenty one twenty twenty one season continues to roll on yeah i like him i like him getting better uh rack i think that uh there's a number of things you look at number one the head football coach i thought he was very introspective after the game talked about okay is my messaging correctly my coaching correctly because of some of the occurrences that had maybe the procedural stuff is he coaching it i thought that was very revealing very transparent for him to talk about that most coaches won't say anything about their scenario what they're trying to do i that arthur was very clear about that that hey i'm going to look at myself what do i need to do uh there's some play calls that i can go to he talked a lot about the last series of downs prior to the first half where atlanta was backed up and was was trying to move the ball out run some clock maybe get a first down he got hamstrung because of a penalty could he have been more aggressive there i thought he was very transparent about so maybe some of the things he could do a little bit better and a little bit different remember he's still learning this roster as well i think there's a growing period that has to go with the coaching staff as well to kind of know their personnel maybe so so know some of their weaknesses what they can and can't get away with because let's face it the the preseason was about trying to figure out who are your young guys and who's the depth on this team what how does that look now we get into the nuts and bolts of the games what can we can and can't we get away with with our 22 that's on the field or the the 28 guys that are on the field and then when you look at what they did defensively you're talking about a lot of times dean piece talks about pressuring the quarterback they don't talk about sacks yeah sacks are residual effect pot that you get to the quarterback on the ground this is probably is is elusive a quarterback is you're going to see all year long right and he made you if he made you pay for it the guy this next weekend he he's not going anywhere now the ball's coming out but that's where styles make fights you could say okay you got the Super Bowl champs this weekend we're going to get our rear ends kicked well some of the blitzes that they came with and the pressures they came with Brady's going to be on the ground with those in less Tampa makes an adjustment to try to block those and then dean piece is going to have something else for it I'm encouraged by that Isaiah Oliver coming off the edge clean and Jalen her steps around him gets him outside and throws the football for a 15-yard game that ain't happening this weekend okay now Brady may get it out and get hit in the mouth we'll have to wait and see but if I'm on coverage that may be going the other way those are the kind of things that I'm excited about you had a special moment with a quarterback that had a special day now is he a pro bowler or a Super Bowl champ no but I think he's a guy that has a chance to maybe make some do some damage in this league you're not going to see that every weekend and I'm not trying to make Jalen hurts the next great quarterback but he presented a problem that Atlanta could solve that problem doesn't exist this weekend hey rack before you add I want to add one more thing when ours talked about Arthur Smith being a guy who owned up to some of the things that he wants to do better or how he can coach better there's a flip side to it as well all three of us have played in this league all three of us has played college ball at the end of the day when your coach puts together a plan it's on the players to go out and execute so I think a lot of this is let's go execute what the coach put in front of us you can go out and you can call all the plays you want or the coach can say he did this and that but in the day there's no coach on the field it's those 11 guys and you got to go prove it to your other teammates that you can execute at a high level so I think all that comes down to it as well the players have to say hey we're going to get the job done and it's not all just on the coaches we got to show up and do our job chess as well 100% and and the one thing I'll tell you is when when I was playing for Jim Moore he used to always say if you point the finger at somebody there's three of them pointing back at yourself right so to me that's the same kind of deal as as a player you could sit there and try to point fingers of well this is why we didn't win this is why we didn't score points but there's three of them pointing back at yourself what could you have done better to help this team end up winning DJ I'm going to come right back to you real quick 30 seconds all right 30 seconds you guys talked about it we got the goat this week Falcons going on the road against Tom Brady they're going to be playing with confidence they got a big victory against the Cowboys on the previous Thursday night I want you to give me one or two keys in 30 seconds or less that the Falcons need to do if they want to win that football game alignment and assignment you got to get lined up and you got to do your job because at the end of the day this is a team especially on the offensive side of the ball that has a bunch of weapons and if you're not lying right guess what they're going to find that match up they're going to create some problems for you and you're going to be in trouble and then you got to create some issues for Brady on the other side with as far as your assignment part of getting after people and they on the defense side of the ball we know how good they're supposed to be you know 22 guys coming back offensively get a line we saw this week you didn't get a line a couple times and you hurt yourself now go out and execute it and put the pressure on them everybody expects them to be the next great best or whatever it is put the pressure on them man you are just as talented as those guys go out and prove it so our same thing 30 seconds what do the Falcons need to do to slow down the Bucks I would say eliminate negative plays stay and stay in front of the change the best you can and that's easier said than done these guys are going to make some plays but limit those and maybe more importantly if you go back to the December game Atlanta lost to Tampa 31 27 in our building they had one explosive play in the first half they trailed 17 to nothing and halftime they had nine explosive plays in the second half that's 15 yards 10 15 yards or more and they won the football game 31 27 defensively limit the explosive plays that's what Tampa lives on are the big play you know it's so interesting you and I are the same wave like Dave because I was going to say defensively they have to tackle because if there's one thing Tom Brady is getting that ball out okay he's not going to hold on to it he's going to put it in the hands of a receiver get them down on the ground because you missed the tackles and that's when those explosive plays come so tackling getting those guys down on the ground I think it's going to be key to slowing down the Tampa Bay Bucks all right Atlanta Falcons end up dropping dropping their opening week matchup against the Philadelphia Eagles 32 to 6 we broke it down for you here guess what we'll be right back here next week to break down the Falcons game against the Buccaneers Dave Archer DJ Shockley great job as always appreciate your insight that is going to do it for this week's edition the Falcons audible presented by AT&T we'll see you back here in one week enjoy the game this weekend everybody take care there's not another bulldog you want to talk about let me think about it let me think about it one more time you're listening to Falcons audible presented by AT&T