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http://espn.go.com/blog/nfcnorth/post/_ ... es-elusive

Has the tiger changed his stripes?? Maybe so...

"The development of quarterbacks and receivers in recent years," said Atlanta Falcons coach Mike Smith, "have made it hard to match up and eliminate or neutralize the strength of those guys. You've got athletes to beat man coverage and formations to beat zone coverage. I don't really see that changing."

I hope so. That's also a great article that lays out how to build a team.

All the coaches interviewed explain the big receivers, and the guys LBs and safeties have to cover are the ones that give them fits.

You can easily take that and see you need a RB and TE and tall WR who are matchup problems. You need strong interior OL because D's will try to get the QB rattled. On D, you need DL who can win their matchups, and everyone who isn't a pass rusher should be able to cover.

That's how you build your team. When you're not building your team that way (by getting blocking TEs instead of receiving ones, and getting backs who can't catch, LBs and safeties who can't cover well) you're going backwards. There's the blueprint. Just follow it.

Yeah its hard to read anything In Smith's comments. Unfortunately the Falcons have not done a great job following that blueprint.

Well the first part of recovery is admitting you have a problem, something I had never seen him spell out so clearly until now. He sounded to me like he realized recently the nfl in changing, and it probably isn't changing back.