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Home > Terence Moore > Archives > 2008 > April > 15
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Falcons have upgraded at offensive line coach
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Flowery Branch — Among the primary keys to the Falcons’ season, which only the enlightened will mention between now and their September home opener, is the anti-Alex Gibbs. “Well, I don’t yell as much as he does,” said Paul Boudreau, the team’s third offensive line coach in as many years, sliding into a grin Tuesday after a minicamp practice.
He’s also the anti-Mike Summers, Gibbs’ successor and Boudreau’s predecessor with the Falcons. While Boudreau has worked more than two decades in the NFL for nearly everybody you can name, Summers joined the Falcons before last season with zero experience in the league.
Not good. In fact, nothing more needs to be said about Summers, who was as overmatched as the guy who brought him to the Falcons, Bobby Petrino. But here are a few more things to say about Gibbs, the eccentric coach now screaming with the Houston Texans. Gibbs had this crazy deal near the end of his Falcons career where he didn’t have to work most of the week and could fly into town on game days.
Boudreau isn’t into long-distance coaching, and unlike Summers, Boudreau’s résumé suggests he won’t need training wheels on an NFL sideline. So this new regime under the affable Mike Smith is sounding promising.
“Last year in St. Louis, we had 100 different combinations of offensive and defensive players, because every Monday there was a surgery,” said Boudreau, referring to his second straight year of trying to guide his Rams offensive linemen through physical turmoil. In 2006, after Boudreau joined the team, he used 10 different players on the line, including nine different starters. Even so, Steven Jackson kept running and Marc Bulger kept passing to unprecedented personal heights.
Added Boudreau, “We had guys [with the Rams] coming in Wednesday and starting on Sunday who didn’t even know our system, so we’ve got to make sure with the Falcons that if you’re out here, and if you’re not working, and you’re injured like Todd [Weiner, recovering from last year’s knee injury], that every play you’re taking a rep mentally. I’ll turn around and say, ‘Hey, what’s the play?’ If he doesn’t know, then that means he’s not paying attention. He didn’t take a rep mentally.”
So far, so great, according to Boudreau, who had to take care of some college scouting business on a trip the other day. Before leaving, he told his offensive linemen that he left a bunch of tapes in a room at Falcons headquarters. The tapes showed his technical work with linemen in St. Louis and those in Jacksonville during his three seasons with the Jaguars. He said watching the tapes wasn’t mandatory.
The room was packed.
Maybe, just maybe, the Falcons will have a complete offensive line for the first time since they reached the NFC championship game after the 2004 season. It eventually became incomplete under Gibbs, because it had smallish, quick guys for his preferred cut-blocking system. Those offensive lines were proficient enough at run blocking to lead the league in rushing for three consecutive seasons, but they were brutal at pass blocking. Then again, the Falcons’ offensive line couldn’t run block or pass block when Summers employed his power-oriented system.
The bottom line: Just six NFL teams have allowed more sacks than the Falcons (133) over the past three seasons.
So was it the scheme, or was it the players?
“The key word is that we’re all starting fresh, and things that happened in the past, perceptions and everything, are kind of thrown out the window until there’s something new out there,” said Weiner, the Falcons’ starting right tackle. “There’s always certain mentalities — some true, some not — about certain players, certain people. And until you really get to know them and see their everyday work ethic on the field, it’s hard to have a total perception.”
The total perception of Boudreau is that he knows what he’s doing. That’s a huge start for the Falcons.
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