Atlanta Falcons: 3 Miserable takeaways vs. Patriots in Week 7
By Derek Snyder
3. Falcons run defense looked even worse against Patriots
If there’s one part of the Falcons defense that has been solid under Dan Quinn’s authority, it’s been their ability to keep teams from running the football whenever and however they wanted. That said, something has changed over the last few weeks, as this Atlanta defense is struggling to get opposing running backs down.
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It was only a week ago when the Dolphins’ Jay Ajayi ran for well over 100 yards against the Falcons, which helped Miami come back from a 17-0 hole in Mercedes-Benz Stadium. Dan Quinn said those tackling issues would be fixed, but apparently that message never made it to the defense as they gave up a total of 162 rushing yards on Sunday night.
Let’s be honest here, even though there weren’t too many of us picking Atlanta in this game, no one thought New England would be able to run the football like this. Sure, James White had a great game in Super Bowl 51, but the Falcons have been pretty good at making defensive adjustments under Dan Quinn.
Unfortunately, there weren’t too many adjustments made from that miserable second-half of the Super Bowl, because New England averaged a whopping 4.5 yards per carry. For a defense that has been compared to Seattle’s somewhat, that’s just ridiculous and unacceptable. If Atlanta can’t figure out what they need to do in order to fix this issue fast, I can promise you that this Falcons team won’t make the playoffs in 2017.