Hunter's Hangout: Falcons look to bounce back against loaded Eagles in Week 2

Hunter Thompson

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Hunter's Hangout: Falcons look to bounce back against loaded Eagles in Week 2 image

Welcome to Hunter’s Hangout, it’s a one-stop shop for all of my pregame thoughts and feelings and just a place where I can ramble week in and week out about the Atlanta Falcons.

Week 1 Thoughts

Offense

I can sit here and ramble on and on about Kirk Cousins. But no need to keep kicking a man while he is down. So let’s focus on some other things.

First things first, let's give Bijan Robinson his flowers. The former first-rounder had 111 all-purpose yards on 23 touches for 4.8 yards a touch. The way the Falcons incorporated Bijan was the expectations that fans have had since he was drafted. Bijan truly looked like the focal point of an offense that he can be. And if the passing game can ever take flight, it’ll open avenues for Bijan to be even more influential in games.

Also, please, please, please get more creative with looks. Us only passing out of the gun and all of our run concepts coming from the pistol is tough. Let Kirk boogie, let us see different back sets, incorporate the pony package with Tyler Allgeier and Bijan. We see it being a success in every team from the Shanahan system. Let’s embrace it with the backs we have.

Defense

Guys, Jimmy Lake was in his bag on Sunday.

They held the Pittsburgh Steelers to 4.09 yards per play (7th-least in week one). I hope to see Lake’s gameplan be as exotic and chaotic up front again against a very, very good Philadelphia Eagles offense. One of my favorite looks was this front that they kept falling into.


In this front they have 6 men walked up, backers mugged up in the boundary and the tackles lined up in a 2T and some other variation, saw plays where it was more of a 5T, sometimes a little wider like above, etc, and then your two overhangs, but I just love it.

Brings a variety of options from it, lets you drop the backers, long stick the tackles, lets the big guys get hands up in the field side passing lanes and you get cool exotic blitz looks. There’s a lot that you can do from it, and it worked so well against Pittsburgh.

I also absolutely loved the 6-1 looks we ran with clouding the line and plugging gaps to slow down the Steelers running game. Would love to see some similar concepts against Philly, but the issue with that is that they are much stronger with their skill positions than Pittsburgh is. So just sitting in quarters or cover-3 behind that front is a simple solution, but could be a decent one. 

Week 2 Preview

God, I hate the way we match up against the Eagles. Their trenches are elite, they have elite weapons with A.J. Brown, DeVonta Smith, and Saquon Barkley, and have playmakers all over the defense with Jalen Carter, Darius Slay, Nakobe Dean, and friends.

It’s insane how many riches this Eagles team has at their disposal. Not to mention two experienced coordinators in Kellen Moore and Vic Fangio that can give the Falcons some fits. Overall, its tough. I have expectations of what I want to see and things I hope to see improvements on.

All in all, I want to see Kirk look comfortable and have the ability to drive into his throws. If we get a second straight week of Kirk looking like Big Ben Roethlisberger in his last season, we will need to have serious conversations.

I hope to see Zac Robinson open up the playbook a bit, seemed pretty vanilla in week 1. Was it on purpose? Was it a struggle to adapt to play calling? Or, was it something else?

What should we be concerned about this week against Philly? 

  • “Classic” Kirk: Will Cousins (who is already struggling I might add) revert back to his classic prime time form of struggling?

  • Trench Warfare: The Eagles have two of the best trenches in the game of football, they could give each member of the offensive line not named Chris Lindstrom, absolute hell on Earth. And for their offensive line, they have the size and strength to abuse our DL if they get reached. 

  • Can ZRob cook: The former PFF star boy was one of the brightest spots of a strong Falcons off-season, getting one of Sean McVay’s right-hand men who is one of the brightest minds in football? Absolute win right? Well, Week 1 didn’t show that. Robinson made a lot of rookie mistakes as a first-time playcaller. Honestly, it can really only go up from here. But can it go up enough to win? That’s the real question.

Drink of Choice this week: 

Each week, I’m going to pick a different beer or cocktail. This week it is a Georgia brewery that’s near and dear to my heart as we are drinking the Alpha Abstraction vol.27 from Wild Leap, a local brewery from Lagrange, GA who has a second location next to Mercedes Benz. They are an incredible brewery and if craft beer is your speed, check them out before the next home game.

(Not a paid ad, but if anyone wants to pay me in beer or money, I’ll never say no.)

Overall thoughts: 

Week 1 sucked. There’s no easy way to cut that.

Truthfully, I’m just not excited about week 2 either. I think it’s an absolute recipe for disaster, especially with how rough the offense looked in week 1. The offense was supposed to be the highlight of this team, with many expecting the team to flirt with a top-10 spot.

The expectations for this season were high, like, winning-the-division-high. And it’s just not looking likely with what we saw in week 1. I hope we see the team open up the aerial attack and look potent like they are expected to be.

 

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Hunter Thompson

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Hunter Thompson is a lifelong Atlanta Falcons fan with an unrelenting passion for football. Thompson has experience writing and creating content for Neptune Scouting and is one of five members of the New Millennium Falcons Podcast. He currently is a Defensive Student Assistant coach for the Kennesaw State Owls. You can follow Thompson on Twitter/X @hthompsonFB