BMitch and JP welcome Falcons reporter Josh Kendall to the show to preview Sunday night's massive NFC clash between the Commanders and the Falcons.
Category
🥇
SportsTranscript
00:00I want to talk about the Falcons, man. It's like there's so much conversation surrounding
00:04this Sunday night football matchup, but we really don't know what Atlanta's doing.
00:09To help us get a better understanding is our guy, Josh Kendall,
00:12covers the Falcons for the Athletic. Josh, thanks for making time for us. Happy holidays, dude.
00:17Happy holidays to y'all. Now, I hope y'all didn't come on here thinking I could tell
00:21you what Atlanta's doing. I don't have time either.
00:24You could give us a better idea than we got right now. How about that?
00:28All right. All right. Let's start with the quarterback switch.
00:32It's a pretty soft landing spot to get the goal against the Giants, but
00:36how did Pennix look? How has the team reacted to that decision?
00:41Well, it's great. The team responded with a lot of energy. My understanding is that
00:48the coaching staff was slower to come to this conclusion than the locker room,
00:53and nobody in the locker room has said that because they do have a ton of respect for
00:57Kirk Cousins. It's hard not to. The guy carries himself like a real professional and a really
01:02good teammate, and you've seen that particularly after he was demoted, but there was a little more
01:09bounce in the offensive step because they had become so limited or had limited themselves.
01:15I don't know that we know exactly where the line there is with Kirk Cousins under center.
01:21You know exactly where Kirk Cousins was going to be in the pocket, exactly when he was going
01:24to be there. The play-action stuff that makes this Sean McVay offense kind of go was not really
01:31available to them, or at least they weren't accessing it. Getting him out of the pocket
01:35was not really available to them, or they weren't accessing it. The throws outside the hash were an
01:41adventure at Kirk's current state, and Michael Pennix immediately gives you all of that. So I
01:48think that the team responded really well, and the offense, despite not great stats, looked pretty
01:53good. Does the fact that Kirk, I guess, has some limitations at this point after the surgery,
02:00didn't seem like that early in the year, but as the year went on, you could see things starting
02:03to affect him. Did that make them make that decision? Yeah, they really thought that this
02:10transition process was going to be a 12- or 24-month transition process. That was how they
02:16pictured it in their mind, and they had such a concrete picture of that in their mind that it
02:20took them a long time to get off of it. A week before they benched Pennix, Raheem Morris said,
02:26you know, we're not going to be one of these organizations that, you know, makes these harsh
02:31and rash decisions. We're not going to be one of these organizations that puts a young guy out there
02:35too early and affects his long-term development. That's just not who we're going to be. This is our
02:42plan. This is our plan. This is our plan. Eventually, they just decided, you know,
02:47it's not going to work. Our plan did not work. We've got to quit being stubborn. We've got to
02:51make the move. So far, yeah, I mean, it worked really well, but as you point out, that's the
02:57Giants. You know, let's rewind history a little bit and go in the Raheem Morris wayback machine.
03:06In Tampa Bay, his first in as a head coach, they throw Josh Freeman in the first-round pick
03:10into the lineup midway through the season. He beats the Packers 38-28. Everybody's feeling
03:16okay about themselves. Freeman loses his next five. So, you know, that's great. Pennix looks
03:23great. You know, the NFL, to steal a phrase that I've heard somewhere, is a do-it-again league.
03:29Can you do it again? Talking with Josh Kendall from The Athletic, covers the Atlanta Falcons
03:34coming up to D.C. this weekend for the ballgame. You can follow him on X at Josh The Athletic.
03:41One thing that will really help Pennix, and I like Pennix a lot, but one thing that will really
03:47help him is the locker, covering the skins and whatever, the Washington organization,
03:54I've seen a lot of quarterback changes over the last decade, and the locker room always knows.
03:59Now, whether they say it or not, the guys that are out there playing know when something needs
04:02to change. Have they kind of rallied behind the young kid? Oh, they absolutely have. I think that
04:09he is mature to the point of boring. You know, he is not a guy. He is unflappable. He is, you know,
04:18flatline emotionally for the most part, but he has, you know, developed not as a strong
04:28relationship with his new teammates would be. That's not right because he's just now getting
04:32a lot of first-team reps, but they respect him. They believe in him. They feel like their capacity
04:39as a team, offensively and defensively, is much higher with him in the lineup, so you do see that
04:44bounce in their step. Good, and another guy that could really help him is Bijon. How big of a
04:52threat is Bijon Sunday to maybe allow Atlanta to control the game on the ground? Well, that's what
04:59you hope for Bijon. His ceiling, the ceiling that he has shown, and Bijon is great.
05:06The ceiling that he has shown so far is to be that kind of back, the guy that allows you to move the
05:12chains. When they drafted him, they said this guy is a home run hitter, and to be frank, he hasn't
05:21hit a ton of home runs. I think 38 yards is still his longest run in the NFL. He's got a couple of
05:27above 30. Yeah, this is not Saquon Barkley. What this is is a guy that can turn negative two
05:34into positive two and negative two into seven, and that is huge. I mean, that's not unimportant
05:40at all, so if they can just keep Bijon Robinson chewing up the clock and maybe break a few 12s
05:46and 18s, I think that that will be good enough to allow the passing game to do what it needs to do.
05:53Is that something that they have to do to make sure it works? Because
05:58this league today, people go away from the run so damn quick that it troubles me.
06:03Yeah, I don't think that they'll get away from the run really quickly, and I do think that they
06:08want to establish the run to keep that front seven off of Penix as best they can. One thing about
06:15Penix, he didn't take a sack in his first game. They gave him some pressure, but he didn't take
06:18a sack. He gets the ball out of his hands really quick. He's smart. Again, let's see how it
06:25translates against a Dan Quinn defense that's going to present more problems than a New York
06:30Giants team that was just done, but I think that Penix gets the ball out of his hands quickly.
06:36I think that he can avoid taking the big sacks. I think that he can avoid giving up making the
06:41big turnovers, but the more you can run the ball, the more you can help with all that.
06:46For sure. For sure. Then in the passing game, Drake London's a high draft pick. Kyle Pitts
06:53is a high draft pick, but I think is Darnell Mooney their best receiver, at least statistically?
06:59That's still Drake, but it's close. In all likelihood, both Drake and Darnell will cross
07:061,000 yards receiving on Sunday night. Drake needs 28. Darnell needs 45. They are a good
07:13compliments to each other. If I'm picking one guy who is their best receiver, for me,
07:17it's still Drake London, but they're just different guys, and that's why they work
07:21well together. Drake is a big body, when at contact, possession type receiver. Darnell
07:28is more of the deep intermediate stuff, can get those layered throws that you see. You'll see a
07:34lot of third down stuff to Darnell Mooney, particularly if it's third and long. If you're
07:40the Falcons, if I'm the Falcons and for some reason I have to keep one and they're not in that
07:44situation, I keep Drake because I do think he is better at what he does. He is more elite at what
07:51he does than Darnell is at what he does, but they're both really good. What's the defense
07:56like going to Atlanta? Well, first half of the year, it was terrible. They have gotten better.
08:03They have specifically gotten better. Their defensive coordinator, Jimmy Lake, pointed out
08:06against the run, which has allowed their pass rush to get home some. In the last four games,
08:14I think that this defense leads the league in EPA per play. That's a dramatic difference in
08:21what they were doing in the first half of the year. A lot of that is, you see this with teams
08:27that play a lot of zone, which Raheem Morris and Jimmy Lake do, it takes and run a lot of games
08:34to create pass rush. They don't have a dominant pass rusher, so everything's got to work together,
08:40and they have done a nice job. You've got to give them credit, and I haven't always done that.
08:44They've done a nice job just gradually getting a little bit better and a little bit better and a
08:47little bit better and a little bit better. The biggest worry for them coming into this game,
08:52I think, is run fits. They're really happy with their run defense, but it's not going to be tested
08:57the way Jaden Daniels will test it because he opens up another gap in the run game and because,
09:03boy, if you just give him a sliver, his straight-line speed is not like anything
09:08they've seen in a while. We're talking with Josh Kendall here from The Athletic,
09:12covers the Falcons for The Athletic. You can give him a follow at JoshTheAthletic on X.
09:18You brought him up in Jaden, and you're obviously covering the Falcons. I know the beat life.
09:24You're so immersed into what Atlanta's doing, but just as an outsider looking in or getting ready
09:30for the game this weekend, what do you make of what Jaden has put together this year?
09:36I think it's been great. I think it's been delightful. I appreciate the commanders in
09:40Cliff Kingsbury and Dan Quinn for putting him in a position to do the things that he does really
09:45well because he makes the league more fun. We've talked about the NFL being a do-it-again league.
09:51That's not just game to game. That's season to season. So am I ready to tell you that Jaden
09:57Daniels is going to be the next Lamar Jackson two-and-a-half, three-time MVP? No, I think we've
10:03got to see that, but it's been fun to watch him be able to do the things that he does so well,
10:10even if they're not necessarily traditional. Ten years ago, even, maybe five, but certainly ten
10:18years ago, I feel like the league would have tried to bang him into a mold that they wanted him to be
10:24and we've gotten away from that, which I think is a good thing. So it's been fun to watch.
10:28Yeah, it really has been. And just kind of, as you watch this thing unfold, you brought Dan
10:35Quinn up a bunch and it, you know, obviously DQ was in Atlanta as the head coach. We all know what
10:41happened in that Superbowl. He's I think fired two years later. What is, how do Falcons fans feel
10:47about Quinn? Because people here, I think we're fairly lukewarm on the hire, but love the dude
10:53now. It's just so difficult to remove 28-3 from their heads and you sort of get that
11:02organizationally. But if you could, I think that they would remember the Dan Quinn era very
11:08favorably. They should, at least. It's one of the best stretches in team history. This is not a team
11:13with a ton of history, but they were really good under Dan Quinn for long stretches and the players
11:19in the locker room, there are five guys on the 53 man who played for him. To a man, I think,
11:25liked Dan Quinn, appreciated Dan Quinn, felt like they were playing some good ball at times under
11:30Dan Quinn. So I get it that he was, you know, sort of a fallback position in Washington,
11:38but what he's got a really good knack for is coming in, making a group of guys believe in
11:44themselves and play a little bit harder. And that's really worked for this team.
11:49Long-term, who knows? Right now, it's fun. It is. It's remarkable because like as, you know,
11:57journalists and reporters were kind of trained to be skeptical and coming off the Rivera era
12:02where everything was taught, there's all this talk about unity and building everything together and
12:06it just fell flat every step. It was hard to believe or fully buy into DQ, but the players
12:13have like it being in that locker room, you see it every damn day. It's pretty remarkable.
12:17Last one for me, Josh, specific to 28 to three, do fans hang that more on DQ or do they,
12:24are they still mad at Kyle too? They put a hundred percent blame for that on everybody.
12:31You know, there's so much there's, it was such a thing that they've got enough blame to go around.
12:38So it just depends on who's in their crosshairs at the time. I think that they blame it on
12:43Arthur Blank. You can blame it on DQ. You can blame it on Kyle, plenty of blame to go around
12:47and they're happy to give it. Hey, Josh, we really appreciate this, man. This is a great interview.
12:52We appreciate your time, bro. Thanks. Y'all appreciate it. All right. Josh Kendall covers
12:57the Falcons for the athletic. Give him a follow at Josh, the athletic smart dude. Really good
13:02insight right there. You got to slow Bijon down. If he's a grinder, like he's saying,
13:08but the thing about it, he may not be Saquon at this point, but you know what? He has the speed
13:12to be a Saquon and they have Washington has been pretty good against the run.
13:17They have a bad habit of giving up home runs.