NFL Week 6 Takeaways and Monday Night Football Best Bets

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Warren Sharp (0:30)

I'm Warren Sharp and this is Sharp Football Analysis. On today's episode, we're going to be breaking down all the biggest storylines coming out of the week 6 NFL games. There's a lot to talk about it, so let's get into it.

There were so many different coaching issues this week. We also saw some penalty issues from the referees. This was a disgusting slate of games. We knew that going into the week. We're trying to find some opportunities to bet from a betting and props market and try to get some enjoyment out of these games. And I've got to start first and foremost with a game where the game plan itself, the coaching decision itself from the onset of the game completely sidetracked and railroaded a team's ability to win the game. And that would be none other than the Atlanta Falcons. So you guys are on blast for this episode. We've got some hard data here to showcase why your game plan absolutely set you guys up to lose this game. And it made no sense whatsoever. So let's dig into some of the numbers. Kevin Stefanski, you guys screwed this game up from a play calling and a game planning perspective. Whether it was Stefanski himself, Tommy Rees, I'm not quite sure. But you both share the blame here. First half drives for the Atlanta Falcons. A three and out punt followed by another three and out punt, followed by one first down and a turnover on downs, followed by one touchdown drive where you got only two first downs, and then eight yards and a punt on your last drive. Those were your first half drives. Now, this is the Chicago Bears defense. The Chicago Bears defense that we knew going into this game was terrible against the run, had not faced any type of explosive rushing attack like the Atlanta Falcons were going to bring to the table here, and was down multiple key players along the defensive line that were excelling at stopping the run, making life even easier for the Atlanta Falcons' run game.

The Atlanta Falcons got completely sidetracked with their game plan, and it caused them to be able to run the ball very infrequently in the second half. They trailed 21 to 7 at half time, and they finished the week with 12 total rushes. That is the fewest of any team in the NFL. How do you have 12 total rushes over the course of the entire game when the whole premise of your offense throughout the first five weeks is that we are latching on to Bijan Robinson, and he is the cart that's going to carry us forward. He is the horse. We are going to just put everything on to Bijan Robinson's shoulders, and he is going to carry us for success. I have no idea what they are thinking. They, despite the fact that they had the highest explosive run rate, which is exactly what we are expecting heading into this game, the Atlanta Falcons were going to have success in explosive runs, big chunk runs against the Chicago Bears. Talked about it on all the shows last week, the matchup show with Rich on Thursday, the betting show on Friday, and it absolutely came to fruition. But they ended up passing the football a ton, and let's break this down here. Michael Penix blitzed on 53% of his drop backs, that was the second highest rate, sacked on 13% of his drop backs, the second highest rate, posted a 32% bust rate. How frequently do you have negative one EPA or worse on a percentage of your drop backs? The worst bust rate of any quarterback of the entire week. And we saw some bad quarterback play. Michael Penix had the highest bust rate of any of them. They dropped back to pass the ball on 71% of early downs in the first half. So I understand what you guys might be saying. Oh, well they were down by so many points. There's not much they could do. It was their own fault that they got down. They had some bad luck and then they couldn't run the football. Stop, pump the brakes, start with the first half. In the first half, they had the highest early down drop back rate of any team in the NFL. It made absolutely no sense. Their first half passing success rate was number two worst. And I've got a graphic here. I'm going to show it to you in one second. But first, I want to run through down by down.