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1-2 after three games is far from what we expected. But at least we see just what our glaring holes are on our team. The Chicago Bears started out very slowly as well last season. But then they picked it up and came within one game of going to a Super Bowl.

Sure, our offensive line shows no promise at this point, but maybe when this team finally starts clicking it'll be at the right time and just what the doctor ordered for us to make a deep playoff run.

The basis of my statement is, I would rather watch us struggle this early in the season and turn it around when it matters, than for us to overachieve during the season and get exposed and embarrassed in the playoffs.

At this point, I guess we can still hope.

Well, we do have a lot of young guys who are developing. It is entirely possible that they will pick their game up over the course of the season. But what is happening to Baker scares me. He's simply getting dominated by everyone that he faces. Also, he's in his 4th year... I don't think that he's going to do much developing as the year goes along.

Not really, certainly not anymore than what is typical around the league. In fact, we probably have a whole lot less when you just count the 36 players on the roster that matter.

I'd certainly rather struggle early, get things corrected, and get on a roll toward the end of the season rather than watch an implosion like the Braves or Red Sox....

MF1

Actually I believe we're the fifth oldest team in the league, which is awful. Conversely the Bucs are in the top 5 youngest. Green Bay is another. Suddenly with how bad the oline looks, along with the future at TE (where most teams are now following NE and getting two so you can go Stanford on everyone with so many look/route combo's from that base set)....no draft picks is gonna keep us from any top rung unfortunately.

Youngest... Oldest... I don't think that is a great stat. I mean really, we may be 'old' and Green Bay may be 'young', but I have to figure the true distance between the two teams in age is negligible and simply something the media likes to blah, blah about. Having said that, the draft is everything in this league, and we've destroyed ours. Young or old, that will be the true end of our consecutive winning season ways.

MF1

again

I think our schedule sets up so that these first weeks of the season are the hardest part, and hopefully we'll be able to get things fixed in the latter half to start making a strong push late in the year.

But unless the Falcons can step up their game in the coming weeks, games I thought were strong possibilities to be wins might turn into losses. Wins over Detroit and Houston on the road don't seem as likely now. Sweeping the Panthers and splitting with the Saints are now big question marks.

After we lost to the Bears, starting the season 2-3 seemed like a real possibility, but I shrugged it off thinking that we could still have a good shot at going 9-2 over the latter part of the year. But unless the Falcons get their act together, that record might fall to 6-5.

Oh no Pudge that sounds like the dreaded 8-8

MF1

I mentioned earlier the dreaded 2-7 and the season being over in October.......This many sacks; this many penalties; all the bad stuff,
maybe trading nest years draft choice away is just "bad luck" Only other time I remember it was for Reggie Kelly and whoever picked
made that trade picked 5th the next year.....(I think)

I want to ask how bad can we be; but I won't...... Just give me hope on Sunday...... You guys who are worried about being embarrassed
in the post season must not care like ticket holders.... I didn't pay to watch us get beat up on most of the season.... Well they can't take the Eagle victory away from me.... I'm telling you guys to enjoy the wins; this crap can come around like the flu; then Blank will just change doctors (:

Defense:
Peters, 2nd year.
Jerry, 2nd year (if you don't count his first year on IR)
Weatherspoon, 2nd year.
Moore, 2nd year as a starter (again, first year was injured)

Offense:
Douglas, might actually develop now that he's 100%.
Jones, rookie.
Reynolds, 1st year as a starter.
Rodgers, rookie.

Obviously there are plenty of teams with more young players contributing than we have. But we do have several guys who have the potential to develop.

I'm too lazy to look up the thread of record predictions, but I do know I was the only who said 9-7. I saw some 14-2, 13-3's and 12-4's as well. My reasoning was simple....this team was set up this year to take one step back to go two steps forward. Continuity on the o-line is vastly under rated. We lost Dahl (20% of the line) and replaced him with a lesser piece. I kinda assumed losing Mike Jenkins would hurt the depth at receiver. We didn't fix the defense. We bent but didn't break, and had timely turnovers to look better than we really were. It's really, really hard to pull that off two years in a row int he NFL. Our special teams also took a hit when we let Koenen walk. Smitty plays the field position game and we let go one of the best for a rookie. (who has sucked.) Not too mention a much tougher schedule.

So add it all up and we poised to step back this year. My only beef is we traded away a lot of picks for Mr. Jones. Unless TD plans on signing some major FA's this off season, we might be stuck in limbo for 2-3 more years. By then Turner will be gone, Rowdy will be in his 30's, Gonzo will be retired and the rebuilding starts all over again.

Moore is not developing. He's already peaked. Douglas as well. And based off the way he's played this year, Spoon arguably has peaked as well. 6 players is not "a lot."

Really? Spoon and Moore have peaked? I don't believe it. I guess time will prove one of us right/wrong.

The example of a team's worst fan

Link?

That's not fair. In fact, his prediction is pretty even handed coming from a guy with 'Angry' in his moniker. Hell, I got 'Fun' in mine and I predicted 10-6 in preseason.

Moore is not going to be much more of an impact player than he was in 2010. His game is not coverage, and while he can improve there, he's not going to ascend to a new level because he's never going to be that ball-hawking corner or a guy that you can put on an island against quality WRs/TEs. Just like Lofton peaked in his 2nd year, he can make small improvements and add polish to his game, but Lofton is not going to be any better player than he's been to date because his upside is limited.

Spoon is one of the team's top defenders right now. And while he too can add more polish and consistency to his game, it's doubtful he's going to be the type of cover guy that is going to be able to be on an island against top competition. Like we're not going to leave him on an island against Jason Witten and expect to hold him to 4 catches for 38 yards. And because of the since he's an OLB rather than a MLB, he's probably not going to be any better a run defender than he's already shown to date.

The point is that people think this defense is growing and getting better, and it's really not. Abe peaked in 2008. Babs in 2009. Grimes and Moore in 2010. Spoon seemingly in 2011. Lofton in 2009. Nicholas in 2010. Edwards already peaked in 2009 in Minnesota. Robinson peaked in 2007. DeCoud peaked in 2009. The hope is that with many of those players, they will be able to coast beyond their peak years with little drop-off.

But the Falcons need to find a big-time playmaker on the defensive side of the ball that opposing offenses fear if they want to make that next great leap forward.

Don't buy the Moore has peaked argument at all. That said, I think it's hard to gauge anyone's potential in this crappy defense that VanGina is calling...

Again, Cappy I think people are assuming that because he's young, he's still got a lot of growing to do, and I don't think that's the case. I'm not saying that he's reached 100% of his potential, but I just don't see him having a better season than he did in 2010.

Again, he's never going to be a ball-hawking coverage safety. He might be a guy that we can trust to go against quality TEs and not get destroyed, but he's not going to be a guy that we can put on an island against those guys and expect him to win those matchups. He's just not going to be a whole lot more than what he was in 2010, which was a big hitting, opportunistic safety. He had 5 picks last year. Do people honestly think he's going to be more productive than that at any point the rest of his career?

Like I said after the 2009 season, Curtis Lofton essentially had peaked because he was never going to be a great coverage linebacker, and he was about as good as you can expect to be vs. the run in that year in this day and age of football. And we have yet to see anything since then to suggest that I was off on that assessment. Is he better in coverage than he was then? Sure, but it's not by a huge degree. If Lofton was a 3 out of 10 in coverage in '09, right now he's no better than a 5 out of 10.

It's the same with Moore. If he's a 5 out of 10 in coverage today, then he's not really ever going to be more than a 6 or 7 out of 10 going forward. He might not have reached 100% of his potential, but IMO he's definitely already in the 90s.

Look, I hope I'm wrong, because there is no bigger fan than Willy Mo than me out there. But what we often see in the league is that young safeties come in and impact early because they are very formidable vs. the run and so-so vs. the pass. But then as time progresses, they don't really show a lot of improvement vs. the pass, and teams figure out how one-dimensional they are, and then they start to get exploited for that. This is exactly what happened with Roy Williams in Dallas, and has happened to others such as Donovan Darius, Tank Williams, among several other young safeties that looked promising early in their careers.

Teams are just so smart nowadays with passing the ball, that you have to be really special talent to be a Darren Sharper, Ed Reed, Earl Thomas type of safety that is going to keep getting better with age or maintain a very high level of play for a very long time. I don't see Moore as one of these types. The reason why his stock fell from a Top 20 pick to a late 2nd round pick when we drafted wasn't injuries as the Falcons brass claimed, it was because he got exposed often as a senior when he was put in coverage situations when he was on an island. That is never going to be his game, and as is, I just don't see him doing a lot more with what he has than what he did last year.

Hey Pudge, this is that thread in which you said Spoon had peaked.

Well, yeah he has peaked now. He's playing at a Pro Bowl level, arguably the best WILL linebacker in the league this year. Besides being a more consistent tackler, he really can't be expected to play any better than he has this year.

Was he playing at that level in week 3 when you said this? hehe. In a different thread, weeks later, you said, "yeah, he has peaked... he's a pro-bowl LB." hehe.

In another thread I pointed out that at the beginning of the year you thought that Spoon was, "as good as he's going to be," and I found the thread today while looking for something else.