FLOWERY BRANCH – Falcons defensive coordinator Richard Smith spoke to the Atlanta media on Wednesday during his league-mandated weekly session.
Because assistant coaches are made unavailable by the team after games, we finally got to address the massive game that nearly 35-year tight end Ben Watson had against the Falcons in New Orleans.
Here’s what Smith had to say:
ON TENNESSEE'S QBs: Both of them are really good quarterbacks. Of course, (Marcus) Mariota is a really good athlete. He's done a great job so far… a really strong arm. Mettenberber, we had them during the (exhibition) season. He's a bigger man. Really strong arm. .. can go downtown with the ball. Either one that we face, we'll do the same thing. They are not going to change their system. It has helped that we've went against them early in the (exhibition) season.
ON SIGNING PHILIP WHEELER: Philip is a veteran player. I remember him from being in that same division when he was with Oakland. He did a nice job there. Then he moved on to Miami. I think he was at the 49ers after that. What he does is bring in another veteran player. Now, it's learning our system, what we do and how we call things. We're happy to have him as a part of our roster.
ON THE NO. 1 RANKED RUN DEFENSE: We are doing fine with that element of the defense. (The Falcons are ranked No. 1 in run defense, but Smith jumped right to the poor pass rush.)
ON THE PASS RUSH: Our pass rush, right now needs to improve. Everybody knows that. We know that. Players know it. We need to do a better job with that. From a four man rush, to pressuring, all of those things, what we need to do is finish our rush. We are working on it on a daily basis.
ON THE TITAN TIGHT ENDS: Delanie Walker is more like a receiving tight end. He goes downtown. He might be the quarterback's favorite target. I don't know what he averages, probably close to 13 yards a catch (acutally, 11.1). But he is very much a weapon. We feel that they will utilize him and try to attack us with that area because of last week as the tight end had so many catches in the New Orleans game. We'll be prepared for that. But he is a really good phenomenal athlete and really good football player. Along with that, there are other tight ends that they do use. There are multiple tight ends sets.
ON THE TITAN RUNNING BACKS: Their running back core. They've got really three or four guys that are solid that they rotate. Dexter McCluster gives them speed. I think he's averaging 5.6 yards of explosive runs because he's got the speed to get on the edge. They are doing a fine job in that area, too.
ON STUDYING THE COVERAGE OF TIGHT ENDS OVER THE BREAK: Anytime that you don't play well. What I mean by that is that we gave up too many yards. We had too many mental mistakes, which we have been able to correct. We had leverage issues. Things like that. It did happen. Were we happy about it? No, we're not. But we were able to look at it and bring it to the players' attention and definitely try to fix those issues that we had last week. We know that Tennessee goes to that tight end position quite a bit anyways. Hopefully, we'll be ready for it.
ON WHEELER PICKING UP THE DEFENSE: First of all, he's a veteran guy. He's been in different systems, who he's learned different types of defensive systems. I think he'll catch on well. Our coaches started with him, the minute we started working him out yesterday. The coaches spent some quality time with him. As a matter of fact at practice, he was able to get some reps. We will figure it out by the end of week, what he knows and where he'll play. It's undetermined right now.
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