Perhaps the most auspicious stat of the day that I could find was 20 of the 76 total tackles made in the game (including ST's and interception return defense) were made by the DL. We haven't seen that in a while. Additionally, that high number was not created by a single player going off with a great game. Instead, the numbers were spread fairly evenly across all members of the ATL DL roster. This bodes well in that we can play a lot of guys without much drop-off. In an attempt to temper our expectations a bit, in my estimation, the FSU OL is below average for our conference. On the plus side, even though we weren't crazy disruptive on the pass rush edges, we did get some push up the middle, driving the pocket a little deeper. Even though we didn't get there much for the first 3 qtrs of the game, their QB couldn't step into his throws the way he would have liked because of that. Most of his throws were off time and a little off target as a result. I remain a little concerned about this group, but there is zero doubt we have come a long way since last year. As a whole, the defense was a more cohesive unit without any busts or alignment issues that I could detect live. That matters a lot and it wasn't always that way last year. We ran our stuff well.
On the flip side, FSU's DL is well above average for our conference IMHO. While I feel our OL struggled mightily getting them blocked, we showed light years improvement over last year. Sims made us look better than we were with his feet and his pocket presence. He didn't have a ton of time, but he is very adept at creating time for himself. He looks like he has been to pro QB training camps about 5 years running. His back pedal retreats while setting up a screen or waiting for a crossing receiver to clear were things of beauty. You may look at the total yards rushing and say, how can you have that opinion about our OL Boomer? Well, I will point you to the number of yards rushing that were gained essentially after plays broke down, it might be over 50% of the total. Our RBs are almost superhero status, there weren't many lanes for them last night but they were fairly productive anyway. My concerns are that we couldn't line up and smash them for yards that we needed. There were too many short, zero, or negative carries and if it weren't for some spectacular conversions on third down, it would have been a much different story. Still, you have to give the OL major props for drawing a very very tough first game assignment and showing dramatic improvement over last year regardless.
