Mike Tanier breaks down four of the most dynamic rookie receivers of 2011

Good article by Doug Farrar, diagramming what happened on the Michael Jenkins TD vs Seattle, and why announcer Tim Ryan was wrong to blame Kam Chancellor.

Matt Bowen of National Football Post (a former NFL player) gives us a a peek inside his notebook .

"Word for word from my notes during our game prep for Andy Reid’s Eagles. Looking at the concepts, we will see the same routes, runs and red zone passing tree this Sunday when the Eagles host the Falcons that we did back in 2005."

While I am a big believer in Pass Offense/Defense being more important than Run Offense/Defense, Brian Burke at Advanced NFL Stats has recently been looking at Success Rate in the run game, and how it is an important indicator of team success.

Follow the link, but long story short is "it appears that a team needs just over a 39% run SR to have a net positive EPA per play".

The Falcons are #1 in this measure of Run Defense (allowing only 31.1% Success Rate); On Offense, Turner is just below the break-even point, at 37.4% SR; Snelling is just abouve the mark, at 42.0% SR.

Former Falcon Head Coach Jim Mora gets butt-hurt by a simple question from Doug Gottlieb.

The always excellent Matt Bowen details the coverage breakdown on Lance Moore's 80 yard TD, explaining why the 4 Verticals is a perfect route scheme to attack the Cover 3.

Former Offensive Lineman Ben Muth's analysis of the line play in the Falcons-Cardinals game last week. It focuses on the Arizona Offensive Linemen, but he goes into detail as to why the stunts and blitzes were working so well, and what went wrong on the 80 yard TD run. Highly recommended.

Notes from Greg Cosell (NFL Matchup) on Week 1 action. Title link includes Matt Ryan vs Steelers defense; Falcons defensive notes here.

The second pass rusher to come under the Pro Football Focus microscope is Atlanta Falcons defensive end John Abraham. Khaled Elsayed breaks down where Abraham was getting his pressure from and who he was getting it against, with the findings making for some interesting reading after Abraham finished with a disappointing sack count for 2009. As always, there's more to it than numbers ...

Brent Grimes and Thomas DeCoud were both in the Top 25 of players receiving additional compensation in the NFL's "Performance Based Pay" program (read: playing time vs. salary). Good for them!

This is FBO's first installment of their off-season series for teams in the NFC South, pointing out possible areas of need, key players that could leave, and Free Agents that could be targeted. It's not anything we haven't discussed here plenty, but it's fun to get an idea of what knowledgeable national analysts think of our Falcons. Bill Barnwell is the writer for this edition, and he pulls no punches (hint: he's not very kind to Grimes).

ugh.

Aaron Schatz and Bill Barnwell analyze the matchups for the big game, using their DVOA stat and game charting results. They conclude this is the closest Super Bowl pairing since FO launched in 2003.

Also, Pro Football Focus has done several interesting matchup posts, like Saints Coverage vs Colts Receivers, and Saints Offensive Line vs Colts Defensive Line. These positional breakdowns are done Dr. Z style (many more on their side-bar).

"Our Joes are not average or even sloppy, but rather unheralded, unloved and, sometimes, underpaid since the one prerequisite for being an All-Joe is that you cannot have a Pro Bowl on your résumé."

Here's the link to the '09 USA Today All-Joe Team.

The actual article is behind ESPN's "Insider" subscription wall, but the link lists 5 players who they say shouldn't have been on the original Pro Bowl rosters, and 5 players who have still been snubbed, even after all the "injury" replacements.

With players turning down Pro Bowl spots because of "injuries", Vince Young will be on the AFC roster. Worse still, if the Colts make the Super Bowl, we could see Kyle Orton or David Garrard as their #3 QB.

Take a look at the current roster again. Sometimes the injury replacements seem to rectify some of the snubs (Clay Matthews, Brandon Meriweather); sometimes they are just confusing and sad (AFC QB's, NFC CB's).

Football Outsiders rank the Top 10 and Bottom 10 Punters in 2009. This is after filtering out the value of the punt coverage teams, and adjusting for weather and altitude (explained in the link). Even though he was great on Kickoffs, Koenen was the 9th worst in individual Punt Value this past season. In addition to that, the Falcons had the 2nd worst Punt Coverage Value of the 20 teams listed. They finished the year tied with Denver for 2nd worst overall Punt Unit (behind Green Bay). Quite a change from last year's record breaking Punt Coverage team.

This is a list of QB's and WR's with the most (and highest percentage of) "failed completions" this season. Meaning completed passes that don't get enough yardage to be "successful plays" by FO standards. The QB % list is a who's-who of bad QB's, and Brandon Marshall is a big name that stands out on the WR list with a bunch of "junk" catches. Just another reason it's crazy for him to be in the Pro Bowl over Vincent Jackson.

Bill Barnwell of Football Outsiders does a great job breaking down the matchups in the AFC Playoff games this weekend. NFC Preview should be posted soon. I am totally fired up for these 4 games.

DJ Shockley and 7 others have been signed to "futures contracts", and will be competing for roster spots next year. Only players who were not on any NFL team’s active roster when the season ended are eligible for such signings.

Interesting info on the upcoming uncapped year (from a Philadelphia and NFC East perspective). The bad news is that if Bucs owner Malcolm Glazer chooses, he could out-bid any other team in the NFC South for players.

WR Brian Finneran moved to IR with a PCL injury.