NFL 2022: The biggest weakness of each NFC South team

Atlanta Falcons’ biggest weakness in 2022 NFL season: Defensive Line

I think it’s fair to say that the Atlanta Falcons have a rather weak roster in general.

The offensive line struggled this past season, they will be without their number one wide receiver in Calvin Ridley due to suspension, and their defense was fairly weak this past season also.

I went with the Falcons’ defensive line, although I could have gone with a couple of different positions.

Before we get into why the Falcons’ defensive line is a weakness, let’s talk about the one positive on it, that being Grady Jarrett.

Jarrett was a late-round pick in the 2015 draft. Despite being a late-round draft pick and only receiving limited snaps in his rookie year, Jarrett showed some promise.

Jarrett’s first full-time season in the NFL wasn’t anything too great, but he would quickly change things in the years to come. Jarrett would appear on multiple pro bowl teams and an All-Pro second team.

While Jarrett was great with the Falcons and still is a quality defensive lineman, Atlanta has struggled to put other quality linemen next to him.

In the same draft that Jarrett was in, the Falcons drafted Vic Beasley. Vic had a good couple of first seasons in Atlanta as in his 2nd season he racked up 16 sacks. Beasley would even earn First-Team All-Pro honors in his sophomore season in the NFL.

Unfortunately for Beasley, things would only go downhill from there. Beasley has bounced around from practice squad to practice squad and now has been linked to the CFL.

Even though Beasley was a major bust, Atlanta did have some solid defensive linemen around Jarrett during his early years. Atlanta had the likes of Brooks Reed and Adrian Clayborn, and while they aren’t superstar talents, they were solid players along the defensive line.

Since those players have left, this defensive line is looking very weak.

Playing alongside Jarrett will likely be Ta’Quon Graham and Marlon Davidson. Graham and Davidson are both pretty young players as Graham is 23 while Davidson is 24. We will look at the younger of the two players first.

This will only be Graham’s second season in the NFL as he was selected by the Falcons in the 2021 Draft in the 5th round. Graham received limited snaps in his rookie season, but in those rookie snaps, he struggled greatly.

With Graham now receiving starting snaps, I’m struggling to see how he will take a big enough leap forward to be a contributor.

While Graham will be entering his second season in the NFL, Davidson will be entering his third. Davison has a bit of a bigger snap size to work with, but despite receiving more snaps, he still has struggled in his short NFL career.

Davidson was a second-round pick out of Auburn in 2020, and he is still young and has time and room to develop, but if Atlanta wants to be anything close to competent, they will need either him or Davidson to step up.

Looking quickly at the edge rushers, we have Arnold Ebiketie and Lorenzo Carter. Carter spent a couple of seasons in New York and showed some decent promise, but has been nothing more than an okay edge rusher.

Atlanta brought in Ebikete in this year’s draft as they took him in the second round of the draft out of Penn State. Ebeketie is young but was a good edge-rushing prospect in college.

The Falcon’s interior defensive line and their edge rushers are both weak, and they will need some big development from their players if they don’t want to have a defensive line than gets ran over most weeks.