Weekend Reflections: Hawks surge without Trae Young, but they need him

The Hawks came back from a 22-point deficit in the fourth quarter to win at Phoenix late Sunday night and complete a 4-0 trip. They are the first team of the franchise’s Atlanta era (since 1970) to sweep a West trip of four games or more. They did all of that without Trae Young.

The development raises the obvious question: Are the Hawks better without Young?

The short answer is, no — of course they aren’t. The longer answer is, they are better with Young but won’t be at their best unless Young can enhance the play of his teammates while quitting his worst habits.

To be a playoff contender, the Hawks need Young to regain his form as the best combination of playmaker and scorer in the NBA. No one on the current roster can reach that level. Acquiring a comparable replacement for Young would be nearly impossible.

But Young also will need to adapt his game to fit the best group of teammates he’s ever had. He insists he cares only about winning and doesn’t need to be The Man. We’ll see once he returns from a knee injury (FanDuel Sports Network broadcaster Bob Rathbun said Young looked good during a recent workout).

One change Young should make is to defer more to forward Jalen Johnson, who showed during the trip that he’s ready become a premier “point forward.” Johnson shouldn’t always run the show — the Suns had success pressuring his loose ball-handling — but he should get more chances to create and score when he’s on the court with Young.

The bigger change Young should make is to become a defensive pest. He’ll never be great at that end because of his relative lack of size. But he can’t spend so many possessions in no-man’s land, neither sticking to his assignment behind the 3-point line nor being a nuisance as a help defender inside the line.

The Hawks started their big comeback against the Suns when they got scrappy on defense. Young has his moments of playing gritty defense. But he’s not often part of the kind of sustained, intense defensive surge the Hawks executed Sunday night.

The Hawks are 2-3 with Young in the lineup. They are 7-2 with him on the sideline. The caveat is that they beat some bad and/or injured teams during that stretch.

The counterpoint to that caveat is they also beat two good teams, the Magic and the Lakers, and routed some of those bad teams without their All-Star point guard.

“I think we are a resilient group,” Hawks guard Nickeil Alexander-Walker said during an on-court interview with FanDuel Sports Network after the Suns game. “We put our heads down and came together on this entire trip. One thing that I would say that’s really impressed me is our mentality (and) the comradery around the team.

“ (Johnson) gets on guys all the time. I get on guys all the time. Everybody accepts the accountability we give. When you do that, you get results like this.”

It’s on Young to help the Hawks keep that same energy when he comes back.

Falcons coach Raheem Morris is ‘losing leader’

The Falcons (3-7) have lost five games in a row. Even Raheem Morris seems to be tired of his own weekly refrain about somebody needing to make a play at winning time.

AJC sports columnist Ken Sugiura asked Morris to assess his leadership after the Falcons lost to Carolina on Sunday at Mercedes-Benz Stadium:

“Not good. We’ve lost a bunch of games in a row in tight moments. You’ve got to find a way to win those games, man. It definitely is on me. There’s no such thing as a losing team; there’s only a losing leader. I’m the leader, and we lost.”

Morris is right to take accountability, but he’s far from the only loser in the building. He’s been the head coach since the beginning of last season. This franchise has been a failure for far longer than that.

The Falcons are on their way to their eighth consecutive season with no playoff berth. They’ve produced two winning seasons in the past 12, and one of them ended with the biggest collapse in Super Bowl history. The Falcons have employed five starting quarterbacks, four coaches and two general managers over those 12 seasons.

They’ve had the same owner all that time. The buck stops with franchise owner Arthur Blank. Or at least it should. Blank once told me the fault belonged elsewhere when I asked him about his decision to allow Dan Quinn and Thomas Dimitroff to put the team in salary cap purgatory.

The Falcons eventually repaired that cap damage. They are still losers.

Morris and general manager Terry Fontenot made a fatal mistake by signing Kirk Cousins for $100 million guaranteed. He’s never been an elite quarterback. The Falcons acquired him when he was older and less mobile. Now Cousins is an ineffective backup absorbing a huge chunk of salary cap space that could be used to improve other areas of the team.

There’s still hope that Michael Penix Jr. can become a good starter. He left Sunday’s game with a knee injury. Getting beat by the woeful Saints with Cousins at quarterback would be another sad chapter for the loser Falcons.

Georgia Tech’s defense collapsed again

Tech’s defense was bad for the second game in a row. Boston College had the ball for 10 full possessions and scored five touchdowns. That’s after North Carolina State had the ball for 10 full possessions and scored eight times, including six touchdowns.

Tech coach Brent Key didn’t have much to say about the struggles of his defense after the escape at BC.

“I’ll look at the tape and let you know,” Key said.

Pressed for details, Key said the issues against BC included vulnerability against passes to the middle of the field and misaligned defenders on running plays. The Jackets had better get that and whatever else is wrong fixed fast. Pittsburgh is coming to town with an offense that’s averaging an ACC-high 37.8 points per game against league opponents.

Tech’s defense ranks 63rd in ESPN analyst Bill Connelly’s SP+ metric (play-by-play efficiency adjusted for opponent and situation). That’s the lowest ranking by far among teams in the top 20 of the CFP rankings (Vanderbilt’s defense is next-worse, at 43rd).

Tech’s defense ranks 68th nationally in points allowed against FBS opponents with coordinator Blake Gideon. The Jackets ranked 83rd in 2022 with coordinator Andrew Thacker, whom Key fired the next October. Tech ranked 75th in points allowed vs. FBS foes last season with coordinator Tyler Santucci.

Santucci left to coach linebackers for the Ravens, and Key replaced him with Gideon. He coached safeties at Texas for the previous three seasons. This is the first time Gideon has run a defense anywhere.

Now his group is regressing so badly that even King and Co. may not be able to carry the Jackets to the ACC title.

King vs. Stockton for Heisman

Georgia Tech’s Haynes King and Georgia’s Gunner Stockton played well in victories Saturday. Both quarterbacks got a boost in their odds to win the Heisman Trophy. The chances of one making it to the award ceremony in New York on Dec. 23 could come down to how well they play against the other when they meet Nov. 28 at Mercedes-Benz Stadium.

As of Sunday night, most of the featured sportsbooks at oddschecker.com had Stockton getting the fifth-shortest odds to win the Heisman with a range from 2-to-1 to 3-to-1. King had the seventh-shortest odds with a range from 3-to-1 from 4-to-1. Since 2021, the four players with the most votes have been invited to the Heisman ceremony.

The quarterback who wins the Georgia-Georgia Tech game will likely get a big boost in the voting. It may not make much sense for a head-to-head matchup to carry more weight since Stockton and King won’t line up against each other. But Clean Old-Fashioned Hate will draw a lot of eyeballs, and it’s only natural for the Heisman voters among them to measure up Stockton and King (I don’t have a ballot).

That game may not be the last impression voters will have of King and Stockton before ballots are due Dec. 8. The Jackets will advance to play in the ACC Championship Game on Dec. 6 if they beat Pittsburgh on Saturday. Georgia is still alive for a berth on the SEC championship game on the same date.

The chances are low that King or Stockton can become serious threats to win the Heisman.

Indiana quarterback Fernando Mendoza is the betting favorite to win the award, with Ohio State quarterback Julian Sayin’s odds slightly higher. There is a big gap to the rest of the field. Mendoza and Sayin are on track to face each other in the Big Ten title game.

My Weekend Predictions were 7-3-1

It was my best record out of 12 weeks this season picking games against the spread. I got seven of eight college games right Saturday. Three of the underdogs I picked won straight up: Jacksonville State, Oklahoma and Virginia.