Second Look: Grading the Falcons first half of 2019

Defensive line – F

The lone bright spot here is Grady Jarrett. He gets an A, while everyone else here fails. There is no point in putting the college grading curve among this group as it would be the steepest curve ever seen.

Tyeler Davison has had flashes of being pretty good, but Jack Crawford, Allen Bailey, Vic Beasley, and Takkarist McKinley have been terrible disappointments.

This group as a whole went 4.5 games without a single sack, of course, it was Grady Jarrett who broke the drought Sunday against the Seahawks.

Blogging Dirty has written in the last couple of weeks about seeing Deadrin Senat and John Cominsky more and that is still true. The coaching staff’s refusal to change up their rotation (that is not working) is infuriating and at best one of the reasons they need to go.

Linebackers – C

This is really simple, neither De’Vondre Campbell nor Deion Jones have been spectacular this season. Jones has been the better of the two but even he has not been as good as he had been his first couple of years in the league.

Campbell has completely regressed and looks more like Duke Riley than Anthony Barr; given this is a contract year for him that isn’t a good thing. He has been beaten repeatedly by every running back and tight end he has been matched up against and many times are reading his route late.

Jones still has a nose for the football but seems a step slower this year. This may be due to the fact that he is trying to do too much given the lack of help he is getting from his teammates on defense and the fact that scheme has been erratic, to say the least.

Secondary – F

This part of the defense has been worse than the front seven. If there was a worse grade to give other than an “F”, the secondary would have earned that grade instead.

The lack of communication among this group has been beyond ridiculous. Guys are covering the same reads which are leaving playmakers wide open for big gains and touchdowns. One would think that after this happened a couple of times that a group of professional athletes would keep this from becoming a habit, but here we are after eight games and they are making them game after game.

Youth can be blamed for some of it, but coaching and scheme are again a big reason they are struggling. With some of the NFL’s best offenses on tap the second half of the season, hopefully, they can get their stuff together over the next two weeks.