Above and Bijan: The Falcons are Back, Plus Week 4 Winners and Losers

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So, what does it look like now? The kids? Hughes, Celebrany, Schaeffer. That's hockey. Oveon Crosby. That's hockey. And with access to over a thousand out-of-market games. You can watch them and the rest of the league. Holy hockey. That's more hockey to love. For more fans who love it.

Ben Solak (0:21)

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Mina Kimes (0:34)

Welcome back to The Mina Kimes Show featuring Lenny. Monday Night Football Recap Edition. We will also be discussing some Winners and Losers from Week 4 of the NFL season. I am joined, as I will be always this season, by my friend, the host of Leaguewide.

Ben Solak, is it Leaguewide with Ben Solak or is it just?

Ben Solak (0:57)

It's Leaguewide. You can put my name on it if you want. It's the whole League.

It's all 32 That's the main thing.

Mina Kimes (1:04)

How much Titans, Dolphins, Cardinals cover it? Leaguewide, that's a high standard.

Ben Solak (1:09)

We do one episode a week where just intentionally only bad teams. Try to get as few listeners as possible. It's a zag in the podcasting space. We'll see how it goes.

Mina Kimes (1:16)

Hey man, two weeks ago, nobody thought we'd be talking about the Atlanta Foul. We were talking about the Atlanta Falcons tanking, Cooper Rush, abysmal offense, disaster season.

Ben Solak (1:30)

Yep, friend of the pod, Greg Rosenthal tweeted before the Packers game. He was like, there's three straight Falcons primetime games. And I responded, I was like, no, thank you. And that response now has about 40 responses from Falcons fans with just gifts of just great London.

Mina Kimes (1:45)

Like they didn't feel the same way after week two. Okay, so we're going to start by talking about the Falcons' glorious win for them over New Orleans. What it all means before we get to Winners and Woofs. Drake Maye talk, perhaps might be in the offing. Some Panthers talk, so you can get in the NFC South. But let's start with the Falcons offense because that's obviously been a, well, actually, I kind of think the defense might be more surprising, but put a pin in that. Let's focus on Michael Penix Jr and Bijan Robinson and how they absolutely torched the New Orleans Saints. Now, two weeks, by the way, of this Falcons offense putting up 30 plus points, looking like an absolute juggernaut. So look, it obviously starts with Bijan, but I want to focus on Michael Penix Jr. Because after week one, after his week one, the Thursday, it's Green Bay. I was like, that's cool.

He did some things he didn't do last year.

Let's see it again. So we've seen it again, Ben. And give me your two weeks in scouting report on this version of Michael Penix Jr. This offense, I have a lot of thoughts too, I want to get to, but let me hear you first.

Ben Solak (2:59)

I like what I'm seeing from Michael Penix Jr. I really do. And the thing that shocked me last night, I went to go double check and I was like, all right, this is a really nice game for Penix. Where's the stack of the rest of his career starts, like whatever. And you go and you find all Penix's career starts and the table is just a lot shorter than it is for everybody else. Wait a minute. This is his 14th start in the NFL. We're not even a season in yet in terms of total Penix games, right? So if you contextualize this as a game we would see in December of a player's rookie season, you'd be like, hey, lightbulbs on, like we've got something here from a developmental perspective. He hammers the seams, right, he's getting the numbers and the hashes in this game. 65% of his attempts, he was 11 for 13 for 175 yards and a score. Obviously, when you have a running game that's working this well, it's a really safe incubator for a quarterback to play well because you get to have a lot of play action pass, but they're getting under center with him. He's ripping not just inbreakers but outbreakers. He's placing the ball relative to coverage. He's layering the ball better. One of my big frustrations with Penix over his first couple of seasons was it was all fastballs. The Drake-London outbreaking route is a little bit of a change up. It's a softer throw. It's meant to sit him down against coverage. We started to show different pitches in our bag a little bit. There's very clear growth, development, understanding of the offense.