 a shot for London head coach Arthur Smith will be making his return to Nissan Stadium for the first time since becoming the Falcons head coach. So sorry he is not he's not the only person returning to Nashville today though lots of players and coaches on this falcons team will be returning to Nissan Stadium we got lots to talk about today but the main question for this Nashville team or for this falcons team excuse me or Tennessee Titans my lord I can't get anything out today I'm so sorry something's happening it must be the Halloween and me the main question for the Titans today would who be who would be under center would it be Will Leviss or Malik Willis and head coach Mike Babel has announced it will be Will Leviss thank you for guys for joining us through for the Falcons pregame show sorry I had a hard time getting all that out I my apologies it's Taylor Bismore and Derek Rackley back again here in Ticketmaster Studios thank you guys for joining us man thank you for helping me out a little bit there that was a rough go so sorry about that but Halloween weekend a little it's scary sometimes it's spooky right yeah spooky a little bit but we also have some spookiness in this game yes a little bit spookiness and a lot of NFL players tend to dress up for the Halloween weekend and one of our players he tapped into the Joker looks like he's been tagged as throughout the season CP is in the Joker costume today with the purple jacket the mask he's got Joker in full effect today how fun is that so for those folks that don't know what we're alluding to earlier in the season when the Falcons released their first depth chart of the year they put him down as the J as the Joker and then shortly after that he released a photo on Instagram of the Joker and basically just a picture of him kind of embracing this newfound role that the Falcons have tabbed him with well today was kind of the first time you got a chance to have a little fun with it it is Halloween weekend here in the NFL so he comes into the stadium in full Joker costume but I did tell Taylor when we saw this video beforehand that's one big looking Joker is it he is such a large human and if I see this guy coming down the the tunnel in that costume I'm running for my life that is like a scary sight the tunnels are usually lined with security guards those probably like the first time the security guards were a little bit more scared than anybody else I mean truly terrifying stuff but everyone's getting into the little bit of the fun and even some of our players have started a new show Bud Dupri has a new show called Bud Brought a Buddy he brings on a new guest every single week and if you haven't seen or heard about it yet take a sneak peek right now what's up dirty birds it's Bud Dupri I'm your host of Bud Brought a Buddy and today I have a very special guest for my first episode on Atlanta he's the mayor of Atlanta you know been here whole career alongside Uncle Dre you know he deserves the title you know it's the one and only Mr. Grady Jarrett my boy appreciate you for coming man thanks for having me bro appreciate you coming hey Demetri come here real quick man give my boys water don't don't touch it Grady don't touch it oh first class service first class service you good all right bet all right bet let's go okay cool cool all right so man you know each person that come on the show they got to do a phrase okay okay and uh I just need you to say it for me to start the show all right what's what's the phrase uh I'm Grady Jarrett what's up Atlanta I'm Grady Jarrett and I'm the bud I'm the bud I'm the buddy that Bud Brought all right bet I'm looking at you I'm looking at oh about right here okay yeah yo what's up Atlanta it's your boy Grady Jarrett I'm the buddy that Bud Brought and we about to get into it hmm one take shout it man now but we'll get into some good stuff man you do a lot of great stuff in the city you know since you've been here uh we came out of the same drag class 2015 you've been balling on the field I get your hard time about your swag on the field a little bit man but you know my goodness your play out your play out there is your swag my swag actually is really good I wear the proper cleats that a defensive tackle supposed to wear yeah health purposes you want me out there some low top vapors that ain't gonna happen I can't hold no double teams doing that so uh you know what I'm saying I tried it before end up having some fee issues man so I gotta wear the weight proper cleats you feel me but I'm still swagging my though now you do we're speaking of swag we're gonna come back we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna have a section for okay so you for the sweat later we'll have a section for that so Taylor I love the fact that bud brings on Grady Jarrett and they get into a little bit of a sparring match and if anybody doesn't know what they're talking about with the sweet the swag on the cleats is bud probably wants to wear something a little bit more sleek a little bit more stylish low top style and Grady's basically telling him I'm not gonna wear that I'm wearing something that supports my ankles something that's a little bit more rigid because I gotta hold up the double teams there's 650 pounds of man that are pushing against me that I gotta fight against I'm not worried about how swaggy my shoes are looking I'm making sure that both of my ankles don't go this direction although Grady did say I do have swag with the cleats that I wear yeah I mean he brings swag every day and like the outfits that he brings into the tunnel and on traveling stuff but I love that he tried the cleats first like he tried to have like cool cleats and then he said they hurt my feet so I had to go back to the originals I love that that's great I'm actually I want to go finish watch the rest of the rest of that feature yeah I mean it's a pretty long one um go watch it though it's so fun it's like 30 minutes long of them just being friends being buddies so bud brought a buddy it's comes out every single week and he will bring a new buddy I think AJ Terrell might be coming out next week so we'll see all right who he continues to bring throughout this season but uh but came from Tennessee was a free agent this year came from Tennessee previously with the Steelers prior to that so let's talk about how many of these players from this falcons team and coaches too have come from this Tennessee team it's just been a crazy overhaul from Tennessee to the falcons yeah I mean you look at the players you look at the coaching staff even the personnel department there's a lot of familiarity with the Atlanta Falcons and the Tennessee Titans organization Michael Pruitt bud Dupree obviously John U. Smith was one that just recently came over as well but you think about some of the upper uh as far as a personnel department a coaching staff Frank Bush Jerry Gray even their general manager Rand Carthon spent a few years here as a pro scout assistant GM Anthony Robinson who was the director of college scouting the last four seasons he's now up in Tennessee there's a number of players coaches and front office staff that have got familiarity in these two organizations but quite frankly once you've been around the league for a while there's going to be a lot of this like every single week you're going to find players coaches personnel that have experience at the other organization or they work with somebody at some point throughout their career yeah well I think it's interesting about that list though all of those players that are on that list it will be their first time returning to Nissan Stadium since they left Janu is the only player on that list that has played the Tennessee Titans prior after leaving them he played them in Gillette Stadium against uh as a patriot and played against Tennessee then but everyone on that list will be returning to Tennessee for the first time since leaving as a player really cool stuff but speaking of Tennessee let's talk about this Tennessee team and what they have we have a new quarterback Anderson are making his rookie debut today in Will Leavis out of Kentucky great start huge start for Will Leavis yeah it's a it's a big spot for him obviously Ryan Tannehill gets hurt in the London game a couple of weeks ago there was really no chance that he was going to come back and play in this game they have not put him on IR yet but we kind of figured okay who was it going to be is it going to be Malik Willis is it going to be Will Leavis Mike Vrabel has said that it's going to be Will Leavis it's going to get to start however he said that there's going to be times when Malik Willis comes into this game they're going to use packages that use his athleticism but if you remember back to last year Malik Willis he was drafted by the Titans but didn't get off to a great start in his NFL career he played in eight games got three starts through zero interceptions had or zero touchdowns had three interceptions that's part of the reason why Tennessee looked at a guy like Will Leavis and actually traded up in the second round to get him actually the first pick of the second round so we're going to get a chance to see the former Kentucky starter who comes into the NFL Taylor with I think what you would say a lot of NFL prototype type stuff he's got the build six five two hundred and thirty pounds big time arm right somebody that they felt like had a big upside in the NFL if you go back and look at his college numbers I wouldn't say it would blow you away it was probably like a sixty five sixty six percent passer the reason why I say that is a lot of time when I look at college quarterbacks that I think are going to be successful in the NFL I'm looking for a guy that completes 70 plus percent of his passes in the college game why do you say that well because in the NFL the windows are so much tighter it's so much more difficult to complete passes so you got to find somebody that's got precision that is accurate in college if he's going to have a successful transition to national footballing not saying that Will Leavis is not going to have that but he also had some interception issues when he was in college at Kentucky as well so what does Atlanta get a face don't know nobody really knows right this is going to be his first start he's going to have a whole lot of nerves I'm sure they're going to have somewhat of a pared down game plan for him not going to have the entire field at his discretion and as I mentioned he's probably going to come off the field on occasion in lieu of Malik Willis and have him run a couple of different series of plays so don't know what they're going to play for I'm wondering if Atlanta turned on some Kentucky film he did play in one pre-season game but he ended up getting hurt so he didn't play in the last two pre-season games so somewhat of a wild card for this Falcons defense yeah it's going to be really interesting to see what he's able to do in the NFL pocket let me say this I say I think I've told everyone in this organization this story because it changed the way I saw NFL quarterback David Ragon the offensive coordinator for the Falcons said in the media availability that scouting a quarterback is one of the hardest things to do in this league you cannot emulate an NFL pocket in any way form or fashion so when you draft an NFL quarterback when you draft a quarterback and you put him out there you just got to figure out what he can do in that moment there's no way to kind of emulate it until you get in the game and you get real live snaps and you have 300 plus men just barreling down at you at every single snap so it's going to be a big challenge for Willevis and we'll see how often Malik Willis comes in today yeah oddly enough you know I mentioned the completion percentage deal in college to your point sometimes you can throw that out the door as well you can find a guy that completes 70% of his passes in college and somehow some way it still doesn't translate to the national football league so I think it's a great point that you talk about as far as scouting a quarterback a lot of people would kind of had scratching their head a little bit with Anthony Richardson coming out of Florida because he wasn't necessarily your prototypical NFL quarterback but why did he get drafted so high because he's got tremendous athleticism and he's got what they call upside which that's what every NFL is looking for what can this guy turn into what can he morph into down the road you never know what's going to happen look in San Francisco they got a guy named Brock Purdy who was the very last draft pick in the NFL and he is balling for the 49ers right now you just never know sometimes exactly so with this with Willevis starting in Malik Willis probably coming in and changing around a little bit and doing a little bit of a wash machine situation between the two of those quarterbacks who can they lean on with not having a ton of touches on this ball who are they going to be able to lean on today in terms of receivers well they've got the Andre Hopkins is the guy but the the question mark is how efficiently is he going to be able to get the football with a couple of things with the Atlanta Falcons defense in the way that they're playing this year Atlanta's got the number three overall total defense in the national football league and even though they had issues getting after the quarterback to start the season they're getting after recently eight sacks over the last couple of weeks against their opposing offenses so they're starting to feel more confident on that side of the football they're starting to get that push so yeah you rely on a guy like Deandre Hopkins but you just don't know what you're going to get out of the quarterback because he's new he hasn't seen a whole lot of football yet and this pass rush is feeling confident right now this those are the three things that are kind of working against this Tennessee offense they got a good tight end as well and Chigacanquo who is a guy that can kind of control the middle of the field tough breaks tackles as well that's probably going to be a guy that you see will let us go too early security blanket for a quarterback but Deandre Hopkins one of the best wide receivers in the national football league if they can get the ball into his hands exactly I don't know if Deandre has much patience but hopefully he can find some today with the rookies or not rookies with the rookie and Malik as well so we'll see what he's able to do as the game progresses but speaking of these rookie of not I keep saying these but of the rookie quarterback a lot of interception issues when he was in Kentucky in college how can this falcons defense who got the interception last week thank you Richie Grant I really appreciate you listening to the pregame show it's really really great of you um what can we see from this defense today and expect from them going against a rookie yeah I mentioned it will levice 43 touchdowns 23 interceptions his last two years at Kentucky and what's going to be different is like I said the windows that he saw in Kentucky are not going to be the same windows that he's seeing in the passing game in the national football league so what do you end up having to do guy like Grady Jarrett bud Dupree that we just saw on bud brought a buddy and that is kind of hard to say bud brought a buddy he titled a show for his own podcast or whatever you want to call that's difficult to get out so we're gonna have a conversation with him about that but those two guys right there they can have an impact at the line of scrimmage pushing the pocket and when they don't get Grady Jarrett's been one of the best defensive linemen since he's come into the league as far as creating push and then realizing when he doesn't get there getting his hands up in the air deflecting passes if not even deflecting it is just obscuring the vision of the receivers that are trying to find the football coming through that mishmash of the line of scrimmage and that can end up deflecting passes away as well so those are all the reasons but then it's the anticipation from the defensive backs it's Jesse Bates it's those guys in the backfield seeing when he is gonna if he's gonna make a throw they can anticipate they can sit a little bit and that's when you try to dive underneath somebody and pick off a pass exactly I'm glad that you brought a bud Dupree though because he was questionable going into this game today was he gonna be inactive was he not and let's see what the inactive say today for the Falcons he's not he's gonna be active today he's playing he's suiting it up with Grey Jarrett in different cleats that's a different conversation though for a different time but nothing crazy right now Tay Davis is on concussion protocol so he will be inactive today but it's pretty much what we've seen throughout the season so far yeah I guess the only asterisk if you will is Pat O'Donnell he was recently signed by Atlanta because there was a late illness to Bradley Pynion the punter they weren't sure whether or not Pynion was going to be able to play obviously we're seeing that Pynion is going to play in this game so that's why Pat O'Donnell is listed inactive here but it was kind of an emergency situation for Atlanta they had to make sure that they had somebody on their roster had Bradley Pynion not been able to go and as you mentioned Tay Davis was out all week in concussion protocol but outside of that we mentioned this over the last couple weeks Atlanta has been very healthy knock on wood at this point in the season that's what you want you got to have the availability of all your best players if you want to win the national football league so hopefully this trend continues for Atlanta that we said see that injury report is very uneventful right and that's a good thing to be an uneventful injury report but for the Tennessee Titans they got a little banged up last game which was week six for them they are coming off there by now Ryan Tannehill is the story of the day for the Titans he will be inactive today working through that ankle injury also Josh while will be out as well he is dealing with an on concussion protocol as well Roger McCreary was out this week at practice with a hamstring injury so he will also be yeah he came started the week in practice he ended up getting injured on Wednesday he was out on Thursday tried to go a little bit on Friday but was just not enough for them to be able to say that he's going to be good to go in the game he's a starting corner so we'll have to make some adjustments in the secondary on his behalf and of course one of the bigger news over the last couple of weeks was the Tennessee Titans trading away Kevin Byrd to the the Philadelphia Eagles and he's been one of the best safeties in the national football league so there's probably some questions up in Nashville about what direction is this organization going when you trade away one of your best and most consistent players so that's a good thing for the Falcons and of course their passing attack when you don't have a guy like Byrd in the secondary to go against he's been great as far as picking off passes throughout his career very smart seen a lot of football he's no longer in a Titans uniform that's right well let's just go ahead and get to the keys to the game of how this Falcons team can come home with their second road win of the year these keys are presented by Wells Fargo what's your first yeah let's start on defensive side of the ball and let's just tackle tackle tackle and why do I say that because the Falcons are going against a guy named Derek Henry that we haven't really had a chance to talk about much in this show and Derek Henry I believe is one of the most physically imposing running backs in the national football league now he's not necessarily having a great season if you look at statistics just a few touchdowns on the ground and he's got 425 yards rushing this year but he's one of those guys that can take over a game plan if you let him now they've got another guy in Tajah Spears who's more of your kind of scat back if you will he's got the quickness he's got the escape ability somebody that can put his foot in the ground and make somebody miss in the hole but Derek Henry has been the story for the Titans organization ever since he came into the league he's got that ability at 65, 240, 250 pounds that he can run you over and then he showed a couple weeks ago when he was in London that if he gets out into space he still has top end speed I believe he had a 67, 69 yard run in that game so he can get out and outrun people if you let him but the thing that you do not want to do against Derek Henry is number one let him get through the line of scrimmage with a head of steam and number two miss tackles against him because he will make you pay if you miss tackles because of his size because of his physicality his ability to run behind his pads so tackling is going to be at the forefront of this Atlanta Falcons defense all game long. Yeah and one thing to know about Derek Henry as they told him the Tennessee Titans told him we're not trading you away you're staying with us throughout the rest of the season so he's going to be a Titan for the foreseeable future as well. Yeah and again I talked about Kevin Byrd you don't want to trade away your best defensive and then your best offensive player because you're in rebuilding mode and yes even though Derek Henry is aging as they're running back it's always a conversation that you have in the national football league when he's healthy and when he gets a steady dose of carries he can make a defense pay for sure. That's right so we'll see what the defense can do against Derek Henry and they might be leaning on him a little bit more depending on what Levis and Willis are able to do today so we'll just keep an eye on that but what's your second key to the game? Yeah it just kind of leads me into that second key and it's going to be pressure the quarterback because we know we're going to have somewhat of a green quarterback it's going to be Will Levis to start we're going to see Malik Willis as well so what do you do to disrupt the game plan? Disrupt those guys their timing get in their face make them feel uncomfortable. What you don't want to do is give them clean pockets give Will Levis a clean pocket early on to where he gets a little bit of rhythm even if that isn't a check down a shallow crosser a speed out something that is more high percentage throws just don't let him get comfortable early you pressure him early and often now what's going to happen is you're going to get him to start running outside the pocket that's going to eliminate half the field and that's going to be advantage to the defense so let's find a way to get pressure on whether it's Levis or Willis early on don't let those guys get comfortable and when Malik Willis does come into the game because he will at some point don't let him use his athleticism to get out on the edge right we don't want him to get outside of contain and get down the sideline especially if Atlanta's playing some kind of man coverage and the defense of players are turning their back to him that's the one thing that an athletic quarterback can make you pay for is if you give up contain play man coverage now you're going to get some explosive runs by that quarterback right so we need to shut down Derek and we need to rattle the quarterback we just kind of need to rattle everyone and shut down everyone right so what's your third key to the game today and on the offensive side of the ball let's not be rattled and let's fix the turnovers right ball security is going to be so huge I've been kind of harping on it the past couple of weeks I'm sure every coach in the national football league but more importantly Arthur Smith and this team they have worked on it this week it has been a focal point but whether it's interceptions or fumbles it's got to be fixed again you look at all the teams where Atlanta is at around the turnover margin Atlanta sits minus seven in the turnover margin right now the five other teams that surround them in the turnover margin right because we're towards the bottom of the league four out of the five have losing records it's one of the statistics where you almost cannot overcome and if you want to be a winning football team you want to play in the postseason you want a chance to win your division this is an area that has to be fixed immediately it's got to be a zero turnover game it's I could sit here and say oh maybe it's just one no it's got to be a zero turnover game because when you play on the road you're always fighting crowd noise you're the visiting team you're fighting an uphill battle to start when you turn it over you're making that even more difficult you're giving more momentum to the opposing offense to these young quarterbacks that are going to be in the game you're going to give them more chances to get the football back and you're going to get the crowd back into the game working against you the turnover thing has to be fixed this week fumbles and interceptions a lot of that's on Desmond Ritter because he's been the focal point of that but that doesn't mean it can't be somebody else fumbling after a run or after a catch everybody on this team that touches the football it's got to be ball security let me see this for the offense to last year a big issue was drake london fumbling that football when he would get it and he'd catch it he'd start running and then boom it would fall out of his arm somehow some way it was just inevitable it seemed like he worked so hard on that during the off season and I don't think he's dropped a ball yet I don't think he's fumbled one yet I don't don't quote me on that I'm not sure but what the Falcons have been doing this week during practice if you pay attention to what they do at practice on twitter or through the ajc or whoever you follow they have been practicing their ball security throughout the entire week with every position group on the team it's been a huge focal point this week and they're hoping to keep that ball in their hands when they have it for younger players taylor it's another one of those areas the differences between the college game and the national football league is that pros are so much better at number one securing the tackle but number two stripping knocking punching the ball out while they are making the tackle they have perfected it that's the reason why they continue to stay in the national football league because they're so good at creating havoc on the defensive side of the ball and creating turnovers so unfortunately sometimes as a young player you mentioned drake london desmond ridder you've got to learn that again maybe the way that you carry the football in college maybe the things that you did as you were trying to run the ball inside the pylon you thought you would be able to score and you didn't think somebody was going to come from behind you and they were going to rake the football out that's what happens in the nfl you hate to have to learn this way but you have to learn which means make the mistake and let's not do it again yeah exactly so we'll see if though they'll be able to hold the ball throughout the game while they while the offense has it but before we get into this game today we wanted to take a moment to share what the falcons did earlier this week which is called hometown huddle every single player on the 53 man roster went out into the communities within atlanta and gave back to the community take a look i can get special for the lana falcons as a team to go out and show and support the community um because every single sunday every single week in the fall they show up for us um so it's the least that we could do to go out and just give back uh put a smile on anyone's face kids adult teenager doesn't matter uh just to show our support for them it's a great initiative for us so a lot of times we have guys that are very experienced in giving back to the community and so hometown huddle is a great day where every single player can get involved give back um seeing um what's going on in our community and the different needs in our community and so we're we're downtown today this group along with 20 other 19 other locations and so it's just a great opportunity for all of them to see our community and give back to arkeblank does a great job but you know with this team and just all the foundation organization he has toward community and just bringing people together um with love you know just give them back time and effort you can do anybody can do that you know i mean so a day like today um don't take it for granted let's say thank you for everything that you've done and everything that you're going to continue to do for the children and the children of this city and all around this so just we just want to say thank you from the bottom of our hearts thank you if you're involved in a community you spend time in the community you know it's going to be too strong it's like everybody runs it's stronger together we can do always more and so i feel like uh personally though uh just i mean i've always tried to find my work at fun time in different ways to affect the community because i know that i wouldn't be who i am without you know support with my community but i actually got to go to one of the sites and i mean we laughed we shared i mean it just felt like a big family it was such a great afternoon we went on tuesday which is their player day off and they they spent their day off giving back to the community and it was such a blast yeah it was a focal point of my career as well given back on tuesday's whether it's going out into the community uh business organizations schools even use your golf tournaments where you get to play with different people that are fans of the organization of the team uh and three words come to mind when i see that use your platform and that's what's great about the nfl is they have the ability players have the ability to use their platform their fame if you will to give back to people that are just so happy to see them to bring some happiness to somebody that's maybe struggling at a point in their life and just showing up and seeing the jersey and seeing oh i recognize that face that's desmond ridder right there the amount of glow that you can bring to somebody else's face by using your platform is what's special about this league so fun like i said it felt like a big family and big families have family traditions yeah and one something that we did earlier this week was we went down to the locker room and asked the players what country song was their favorite but before we show you guys i want to ask you what's your favorite country song we're in nashville one in rome jimmy allen okay freedom was a highway okay that's a good one i'd sing it right now but i do a bad job i would love to hear you sing it but maybe when we're done maybe yeah off air off air but um i got a whole list so i won't even bore you with that i got a whole list i got my cowgirl boots on i'm like living my life with nashville but hope you guys enjoy the game we're gonna leave it here for now and uh go ahead and take a look at what the player's favorite country songs are add those to your playlist bye guys what's your favorite country song my favorite country song is really like a little three-way tie could eat my top three for real oh where corn don't grow by weather jenny can you sing it no i won it by a hundred haze country rose that's my favorite country song love you like i do i don't even remember what that's about what's the one song and it's like uh oh wait wait wait dirt row anthem one of my favorite i changed i changed my answer i prefer the research it's uh something in the orange by zack bryan can you sing it uh 23 by chase beckham she's a good one right there she got the best of me yeah that's the song i like yeah she tells me you're never coming home to me i'm just a man to me or all i am tenancy whisk i could sing the hell out of tenancy whisk i ain't gonna do it for y'all but i could sing the hell out of that that's my top three