With new defensive coordinator Ryan Nielsen, who had been the New Orleans Saints’ defensive line coach, I’d say to expect a lot more varied fronts and man coverage from the Atlanta Falcons. The Falcons played man last season 22% of their snaps, which ranked 27th in the NFL. The 2022 Saints played man coverage on 40% of their snaps, which ranked second. New Orleans especially played a lot of 2-man – the most in the league.
Now, we don’t automatically assume that Nielsen will bring everything over from New Orleans, but when you look at their new personnel, they’re telling you what they want to do. They traded for Jeff Okudah, who is a dead-red press cornerback. Okudah had 43 coverage snaps in 2-Man last season. They got Mike Hughes, who was also with the Lions last season, and he’s played that stuff, as well. A.J. Terrell had kind of a down season in 2022, but he’s great when he’s on, and he is very comfortable in man coverage.
Adding former Cincinnati Bengals safety Jessie Bates III certainly allows them to play more two-high stuff. Last season, the Falcons were in two-high 44% of the time, which ranked 24th. The Saints were in two-high 54% of the time, which ranked 15th.
Then, you add the guys to a front seven that didn’t do much of anything to disrupt the quarterback last season – they had the NFL’s second-fewest sacks with 21, and the NFL’s second-fewest pressures with 88. David Onyemata. Calais Campbell. Bud Dupree. Kaden Elliss. The Saints ran a ton of different fronts last season, and you’d expect a lot more varied fronts than we saw last season. Not that there will be a ton of blitz – the Falcons did it 19% of the time last season, and the Saints did it 15% of the time – but it’s more about throwing things at the quarterback pre-snap that the quarterback might not be ready for.
On this week’s edition of “The Xs and Os,” Greg Cosell of NFL Films and ESPN’s NFL Matchup discussed why Nielsen should bring as many things from New Orleans as he possibly can:
“One of the things I’ve done over the years is, when I talk to offensive coaches who game-plan, I always ask them, who are the toughest coaches and coordinators to play against? And Dennis Allen’s name always comes up. So there’s no question that Ryan Nielsen, who’s a younger coach… this is his background right now. That doesn’t mean that he doesn’t have his own ideas, but this is his background right now. So, you would expect to see a lot of those same principles.
“Now, Dean Pees was there, and Dean Pees is a guy who’s very multiple in how he approached pressures and coverages. So, it’s not as if they didn’t do a lot of different things, but you mentioned 2-Man, and I’ll be very curious to see if they’ll do that [in Atlanta]. Obviously to do that, you have to have a pass rush. Because if you’re going to play 2-Man coverage, that’s seven people in coverage. The five man-to-man defenders, and the two deep safeties. You need to be able to impact the quarterback with four defenders, and doing that within three seconds.”
You can watch Doug and Greg discussing that defensive overhaul right here:
