FLOWERY BRANCH — The Falcons’ powerless pass rush has ensconced the club among the 1%, albeit the wrong 1%.
Dating to 1982, the year that the sack became an official NFL statistic, the 2024 Falcons have become only the fifth team to accumulate six or fewer sacks in its first eight games. Out of a little more than 1,300 team seasons in that span, that puts this year’s Falcons team well within the first percentile of that group.
This isn’t merely a low-grade pass rush that the Falcons have nudged at their first eight opponents. It’s historically ineffective.
But there’s more.
The coach of the last team to play its first eight games with such a faint trickle of sacks – none other than Raheem Morris in his first season with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (2010). His defensive backs coach was someone else Falcons fans know – Jimmy Lake, now Morris’ defensive coordinator.
So, the Falcons are irrevocably doomed to a season of opposing quarterbacks luxuriating in the pocket, stringing completions like Christmas lights?
Hold that thought for a moment.
The Falcons have come to a pivotal set of days. As regards their pass rush, they took a step back Sunday at Tampa Bay. Buccaneers quarterback Baker Mayfield threw 50 times without being sacked or hit, a rare degree of protection. Dating to the start of the 2023 season, it was only the second time that a quarterback threw at least 50 passes in a game without getting sacked, according to Stathead data.
Morris called it an anomaly, which is a nice way of putting it. And it does need to be pointed out that the Falcons did win, improving their record to 5-3.
But it only elevated concerns that the Falcons need to find pass-rush help in the trade market, a window that closes for the season Tuesday. That leaves only the Sunday home game against the Dallas Cowboys for Lake, Morris and their defense to demonstrate that supplements aren’t necessary. (Unrelated, but it may be a home game in name only. At practice Thursday, the Falcons cranked up the speakers, presumably to prepare the offense to deal with the tens of thousands of Cowboys fans expected to occupy Mercedes-Benz Stadium. Must be a lot of transplants from the Metroplex.)
Whether general manager Terry Fontenot trades for more pass-rush help after swapping a 2025 third-round pick for four-time Pro Bowl edge rusher Matthew Judon in the preseason will provide a window into the team’s outlook for the season.
Are the Falcons so urgent about winning this season and/or so unconfident in the pass rush at present that they’ll make another future-mortgaging trade to do so?
Or does Fontenot trust in Morris and his staff’s ability to squeeze more out of the defense than it has shown thus far? Does he not want to add more veteran help (on a roster that already has a lot of it) when it would mean further reducing his stock of future draft picks or possibly impair the club’s salary-cap health?
For what it’s worth, Morris and Lake assert that the defense’s ability to interfere with the quarterback is improving, even if savings accounts grow faster than the team’s sack total.
It bears noting that the sack total does not misrepresent the Falcons’ limited effectiveness at harassing quarterbacks. Aside from ranking last in the NFL in sacks, they also rank last in the NFL in quarterback pressure rate at 25.9%, according to NFL Next Gen Stats. In the six full seasons for which the league has pressure-rate data, only two teams have finished a season below that rate.
They have a pressure rate of 23.8% when sending four or fewer pass rushers, third lowest in the NFL.
The sack rate when sending four or fewer pass rushers is a league-low 1.9%. Remarkably, the sack rate when blitzing is scarcely better (2.4%).
It speaks to the pass coverage also factoring into the sack shortage.
“It’s always rush and coverage,” Lake said. “I think our rush wasn’t what we wanted it to be last Sunday, but also our coverage wasn’t either.”
Not the sort of complementary football that coaches like to talk about.
Still, both Lake and Morris see reason to believe in better performance. For instance, the defense has shown better in practice than in games, they said this week.
“I think we’ve seen the pass-rush moves, we’ve seen the pocket close, making it difficult on Kirk (Cousins), making it difficult on (Michael) Penix,” Lake said. “But now we need to see that translate over to the game as well.”
Falcons have had opportunities but allowed quarterbacks to escape. Their play in the 34-14 home loss to Seattle two games ago, when the Falcons were credited with 17 quarterback pressures but had only one sack of Seahawks quarterback Geno Smith, is a prime example.
“That’s what’s not good enough in the game,” Lake said. “So we get another rehearsal at it on Sunday.”
It may not come across as the most confidence-inspiring message. But this is where Morris’ 2010 Buccaneers team might be instructive, or at least offer a morsel of hope to those clinging to the notion that the Falcons’ pass rush can improve without additional help.
After the 2010 Bucs found their way to six quarterback sacks in their first eight games, they became a legitimate pass-rushing operation in the second half of the season. They finished the season with 26 sacks, averaging 2.5 sacks in the final eight games after a .8 rate in the first eight.
When Morris was defensive coordinator for the Los Angeles Rams from 2021-23, his defenses twice followed the same pattern. In 2022, the Rams averaged 1.9 sacks in the first eight games and 2.6 in the final nine. In 2023, it was 2.0 and 2.8. (In 2021, when the Rams won the Super Bowl, it was 3.1 and 2.8.)
Lake said that it is the trend of every team – identifying a weakness and then addressing it over the course of the season.
“We’re never where we want to be in the beginning of the season; we’re never where we want to be in the middle of the season,” Lake said. “And usually when we start hitting our stride at the right time, that’s when championships come, and that’s when championship rings come.”
At this point, no one’s asking for rings. Just a couple of sacks will do.
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