[FULL EPISODE] The Falcons Are Flying, The Eagles Are Not + Carnell Tate SZN??

James Koh (0:01)

We've got our Taycan is loaded and ready.

Matt Harmon (0:03)

Absolutely dominant on deep routes, absolutely dominant on short routes.

James Koh (0:07)

Your boys are backbanging.

Matt Harmon (0:08)

Excellent separation against ManCover. This is Reception, Reception, The Show.

James Koh (0:15)

Yo, what's cracking everybody? James Koh, Matt Harmon here with you. You're listening to Reception Perception, The Show. All right, Matt, we are again heading towards week number five. How are we feeling today, pal?

Matt Harmon (0:28)

Good. This is a quarter of the season, essentially. I know we have 18 weeks now, but still four weeks in.

This is when things really start to stabilize, normalize here, so we've got a little bit of a top-wide receiver check-in to do today. But yeah, obviously things will change over the course of the year. Teams will go up, teams will go down, players will do the same. But for the most part, once you get four weeks in, we're starting to get a little bit more predictive data than our off-season projections. That's typically what we see this time of year. So I'm excited to talk about some of that stuff today.

James Koh (1:02)

Listen, Atlanta's offense has been night and day since Michael Penix took over. And it's absolutely wild. There was a lot of concern, at least from your boy over on this side, that Michael Penix would not be a good fit under Stefanski system that relies on a lot of under center stuff. And yet, Michael Penix, and to be 100% fair, I'm not totally sure that Michael Penix actually looks that great.

But I think we could all sit here and say he's, I mean, leagues above, universes above what they had in Cooper Rush. So functional quarterback play certainly from Michael Penix.

But the trickle down effect on both on the entire passing game, just the offense in general, has been a stark contrast. What do you make of Michael Penix here with Atlanta? And do you think this ends up holding up? Or man, listen, was it just like he had two great matchups in primetime and were over indexing? Because again, these were island games.

Matt Harmon (2:07)

Well, yeah, I mean, of course, that obviously matters, right? That matters quite a bit in terms of the matchups and everything. But yeah, I do think, nevertheless, this is pretty real. Pretty real for Michael Penix. And just because the Stalkins offense is not bad, like they don't have bad players.

I will admit, I was a little like kind of skeptical of what Kevin Stefanski and Tommy Reese would bring to the table, but it's a really good sound offense. As I guess, as long as Bill Callahan, legendary offensive line coach is not working for his son. I think he still got it because not great in Tennessee the last couple of years, but was really good, has been really good this year with the Atlanta Falcons. I think that offensive line, even losing one of the NFL's kind of stalwart left tackle, Ironman type, Jake Matthews never misses games. He goes out there and he doesn't play a lot on Monday night football. That offensive line is still kicking butt. I want to talk about the run scheme for sure and what to do about Brian Robinson of it all in just a second. But this is a sound offense. I think the scheme has looked good. I actually think that I wrote about Drake London for the week three.

He's in the Charting Tracker. Talked about how he's getting the off ball stuff that we want to see. He's getting the move around looks that we want to see. I would credit Tanner Angstrand, passing game coordinator. I liked his work with the Jets last year from a receiver deployment perspective. It looks a lot more dynamic than some of these Cleveland offenses did sometime. And Kevin Spance, to his credit, is a guy that really will be pretty variable based on the skills of his players and takes a lot of different ideas. In from different systems and different families of coaching trees. I think he's taken a little bit of something from Tanner Angstrand, who is a Ben Johnson disciple. So Drake London was off the ball, like I mentioned, a pretty good amount, 61 percent in week three. That was an encouraging sign to me. Playing some slot, he's in the backfield, he's in the slaughter backfield on 32 percent of his snaps. Good enough. That's what we want to see for Drake London.

And then the Michael Penix of it all, I mean, he saved this offense. I have an offense efficiency metrics that blends a lot of different variables and everything, success rate, drop back, rushing EPA, explosive play rate, points per drive, score percentage on your drives. Weeks one and two, they were the 26th and 32nd best offense in the NFL. The last two weeks, second and first.