A Closer Look At How Eagles “D” Shut Down Falcons

Sean McDermott and the defensive coaches must have figured out when the Falcons were going to run based on tendencies out of their formations or they were reading the stances of the offensive linemen.

Whatever it was they had their safeties involved in run defense when the Falcons ran the ball, but they had them deep when Atlanta chose to throw.  It’s as if the Eagles were in the Falcons huddle, when they were calling their offensive plays.

The Eagles coaches gave the Falcons coaching staff a clinic, yesterday.

We were all more concerned about the John Abraham versus King Dunlap matchup as compared to the Trent Cole versus Sam Baker battle.  Dunlap took on the challenge and handled Abraham, while Cole showed us why he’s been more consistent in his career than Abraham.

Cole put constant pressure on Falcons quarterback Matt Ryan.  He hit Ryan numerous times and sacked him twice while forcing one fumble.

Everybody on the defensive front made a play against Michael Turner and the Falcons running game.   Atlanta was the second leading rushing team in football when they came in, but the Birds held them to 69 yards on the ground.

The tackles were getting penetration and somebody had better get a message to both Mike Patterson and Brodrick Bunkley that Antonio Dixon has been the best defensive tackle on the field, the last two weeks.  That tells me the Eagles should have a three man rotation which Bunkley gets back.

Stewart Bradley didn’t have a great game but he did make a couple of big plays which got the defense off the field.  He got to Matt Ryan on a blitz on third down in the first series.  Later on he stripped the ball out of Jason Snelling’s hands to force an incompletion on third down.

Asante Samuel could have had two or three interceptions in this game.  What a difference his presence made in the secondary this week?  Every time you throw the ball his way, it’s in jeopardy of being picked off.  He’s putting more of an effort in his tackling, but he can still improve his technique.

Teams are going to be targeting Ellis Hobbs more and more as the season progresses.  He was fortunate that the Falcon receivers dropped a couple of passes which could have been big plays.

Rookie Nate Allen took a bad angle on a quick post by Michael Jenkins which turned into a bigger play than it should have been.  He didn’t know how fast Jenkins was.

Quintin Mikell did a nice job of moving in and out of the box to keep Ryan guessing about what defense they were playing.  He helped set a tone on the first defensive series.  He and his teammates let Turner know that yesterday wasn’t going to be a good day for him.

Joselio Hanson made a couple of nice plays when he was in there on nickel.  He’s better in the nickel spot than he is outside at the cornerback position.