Falcons: Run Defense

[AUTiger7222]

I thought the Falcons run defense was better today. The Chargers had 116 yards rushing on 17 attempts. That's a 6.8 average. On the surface it looks like another bad game by our run defense but those numbers don't tell the whole story. Jackie Battle had a 52 yard run near the end of the game. If you take that run away the Chargers had 64 yards on 16 attempts for a 4.0 average. While not great, it's much improved over the first two games.

[Capitan]

I agree...run defense got better!

[Jesus]

The key is to not let big plays mean anything or let yards turn into points. Our defense is very good at this.

[RnB]

Yup, we did a nice job on Mathews but did allow a couple dump offs to go for some yards. Once again, our offense put up a lot of points and forced them to throw more than they wanted to. I thought it was a well played game in the run defense department, other than the long one in garbage time.

Mathews is a really good back. We didn't tackle him as well as we could have but the whole D was swarming on him to minimize his impact, it was awesome.

[RockHoward]

The Nolan approach is to go for big plays on defense and the Falcons have certainly had their share. The trade-off here is that the defense will give up a few more big plays to the opponents in the process. So far that hasn't been big problem but don't be shocked if it eventually happens. When it does it won't mean that things are suddenly broken, but just that aggressive defense is high risk, high reward. In any event, this approach to defense makes Falcons games much more watchable.

[juraitwaluzka]

(09-24-2012 01:41 PM)RockHoward Wrote:  The Nolan approach is to go for big plays on defense and the Falcons have certainly had their share. The trade-off here is that the defense will give up a few more big plays to the opponents in the process. So far that hasn't been big problem but don't be shocked if it eventually happens. When it does it won't mean that things are suddenly broken, but just that aggressive defense is high risk, high reward. In any event, this approach to defense makes Falcons games much more watchable.

I'll gladly take my chances with that vs what we had before.

[AUTiger7222]

(09-24-2012 01:41 PM)RockHoward Wrote:  The Nolan approach is to go for big plays on defense and the Falcons have certainly had their share. The trade-off here is that the defense will give up a few more big plays to the opponents in the process. So far that hasn't been big problem but don't be shocked if it eventually happens. When it does it won't mean that things are suddenly broken, but just that aggressive defense is high risk, high reward. In any event, this approach to defense makes Falcons games much more watchable.

Agreed and welcomed. Also we held the Chargers to below 300 yards of offense after giving up almost 400 yards of offense to the Chiefs and Broncos.

[babuka]

Well considering the Falcons have pretty much used only 2 linebackers the whole year so far it is good. The MLB, Dent, is not playing that much and that is why they didn't resign Lofton. The Falcons nickle package is turning into their base package so far this year.