Falcons Working on Eliminating Missed Tackles

The Falcons have to start tackling better. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

The Week 7 bye came at a great time for the Atlanta Falcons. It gave the team an opportunity to refocus and fix some glaring issues. More specifically, it gave the Falcons an opportunity to work on tackling fundamentals.

According to Pro Football Focus, the Falcons have missed 52 tackles through the first six weeks of the season. They’re on pace for 138 missed tackles, which is 31 more than they missed last year.

The Falcons are missing tackles because they aren’t wrapping up for the most part. The biggest culprits are Thomas DeCoud, Dunta Robinson, and Sean Weatherspoon; they often take a chance to lay the wood rather than just bring the ball carrier down.

According to Jay Adams, multiple Falcons addressed the tackling issue on Monday during an open locker room session.

DeCoud gave his input:

“I think, now, we have the technique of tackling. Once we make contact, we know how to do that. But I think now it’s more so just our path to the ball. The speed of the game is a lot faster and it’s faster than it’s ever been before, so guys can eat up angles or make you wrong once you get on your way to the ball, so it’s more about the path to the ball and making sure we have the correct angles once we’re entering contact.”

Ray Edwards simplified it:

“All of us have been playing football since we were probably 10 years old. We know how to tackle. We’ve just got to do it.”

And Weatherspoon chimed in:

“We’ve got to tackle. We’ll have the opportunities. We’ll be faced with some of the things that we’ve been faced with in the games previously, so they’ll watch tape and see things they think they can do against us and it’ll just be up to us to go out there and make sure we hit them whenever we have those opportunities.” 

There’s no doubt in my mind the Falcons will start tackling a lot better in the second half of this season.