Looking at PFF, I guess those 7 sacks were a figment of my imagination
 

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After the game, after seeing what I imagined was 7 sacks and an ungodly number of pressures, I visited in order to see where I should point the finger.

I scrolled from Raimann to Nelson to Bortolini to Goncalves and Braden Smith. I looked at each of them, and imagine my surprise when I found that not one of them had given up a sack.

To summarize:

Bernard Raimann gave up 1 pressure and earned a pass blocking grade of 88.0
Quenton Nelson didn’t allow a single pressure and had a grade of 89.3
For Tanner Tanor Bortolini, it was 1 pressure with a grade of 68.3
Goncalves allowed a whopping 2 pressures on route to a grade of 65.6
And for Smith it was 1 and 82.3

All in all, a pretty good performance with only a couple of hiccups.

Being curious, I began to wonder just where those 7 mystery sacks and 9 pressures came from. Judging by PFF, no one was responsible, but there had to be an explanation.

After pondering it for a while and working my way through a couple..or so…Budweisers, several possibilities sprang to mind.

Perhaps the Falcons Defense discovered some new path to the quarterback that bypassed the Offensive Line, sort of like Columbus sailing west, trying to find China?

Maybe Montgomery Scott had beamed them into the backfield.

Could they have sprung from the ground like the undead from some old George Romero Zombie movie…I have to figure they were the fast zombies from World War Z, because if they were slow zombies, even the most immobile quarterback would have had no trouble evading pressure.

Or were, somehow, elves and gremlins involved?

In the end, I was unable to arrive at a plausible explanation, so I leave it up to any of you to explain it.

o


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o

I didn't see the breakdown or whatever, and PFF isn't a guarantee to be accurate... But there are plenty of sacks that most would blame the OL for when they actually did their job.

Like the 3rd quarter sack-fumble... that was just a great call. Every OL had a man (Bortolini's started to rush, then dropped back) so Pearce ends up being a free runner backside. And playside was completely compromised by the coverage. Jones should have just dirted ball at JT's feet immediately. Instead, he drifted and catastrophe.

I'm also pretty sure one or two were Jones scrambling out of bounds.

I don't know about all 7 sacks, but I've heard from more than one source that the OL wasn't that bad on review.

It appears that the offensive line isn't the only thing that causes sack. I also felt that the line had totally messed up. Might have been a combination of circumstances that all came together.

It definitely was a little different story on each sack. There was one where JT missed his block on a spin move by the defender.

There was one that has already been mentioned, where DJ wanted JT on the screen, while JT was covered. DJ should have dirted the ball and took the sack instead.

There were 1 or 2 where DJ just got caught behind the LOS on a scramble.

The worst were when DJ kept drifting back instead of climbing the pocket. That has to stop. Because he's leaving the tackles out to dry when he does that.