Talking The Line: Falcons Have Issues In Trenches
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The Atlanta Falcons finished the season 7-10 in 2021 and missed the playoffs for the fourth consecutive season.
The play in the trenches is a big reason for the Falcons lack of success. To anemic pass rush produced just 18 sacks in 2021.
Yes, that was last in the league by a whopping 11 sacks. The Falcons would need a 63% increase in sacks just to tie the Philadelphia Eagles for last at 29.
Edge rusher Steven Means had an impressively-inept season. Means started 14 games without recording a sack and had just two tackles for loss and two quarterback hits all season, and none since Week 5 against the New York Jets.
Nine consecutive games without so much as getting the quarterback dirty? Seems almost impossible, but it wasn't.
The numbers don't get much better on the offensive side of the ball.
The Falcons finished with the 31st rushing attack in the league at 85.4 yards per game. Matt Ryan was knocked down 85 times, the most in the NFL.
The Falcons obviously need upgrades in the trenches, but coach Arthur Smith wasn't ready to chuck his linemen under the bus.
Instead, he preached overall improvement.
When asked about fixing the lines of scrimmage, Smith didn't appreciate the insinuation that they were broken to begin with.
"Well, I love the loaded question," he said. "Statistics, however you want to manipulate them, those are easy. Those are the low hanging fruit. It doesn't tell the story of the whole season.
"It doesn't tell the story necessarily on how you win games. Like I said before, we went 7-2 in one-possession games. We've got to close the gap in the other games. We've got to continue to improve."
So what's the answer?
"There's a lot of ways to fix it," Smith continued. "When you have 5 yards a carry, to make a grand indictment on the run game, I think that's a little bit at the surface level there.
"We need to be better all around. There's multiple ways you can improve the fronts. We've got to improve this whole team as we climb. The goal here is to sustain success and to win championships."
Smith's believes there is more than one way to get better. Smith pointed out that the 2020 Falcons were fifth in passing, but won just four games.
So the rushing stats this season can be skewed, in his opinion.
"There were times against really good defenses we ran the ball well," Smith said. "We need to do a better job sustaining drives, getting in the red zone, and scoring more points than the other team. It's pretty practical. And we've got to close the gap in those other games."
There's no question the Falcons need to get better on the lines of scrimmage, but as Smith points out, there are a lot of things the Falcons could do better to improve in 2022.
