Is this just an excuse so they don't have to say they officially benched Mariota, or were they actually still running him out there when he was injured and sucking?
Looks like Mariota made the independent decision to leave the team to get his knee looked at. Spoiler FLOWERY BRANCH, Ga. — Falcons head coach Arthur Smith knew he was taking a risk last week when he chose to make rookie Desmond Ridder his starting quarterback. What he didn’t know at the time is that he wouldn’t have a safety net for that decision. That’s how things turned out, though, when veteran Marcus Mariota left the team at least temporarily to have what Smith described as a “chronic” knee issue evaluated. The Falcons don’t know when or if Mariota, who started the first 13 games of the season, will return to the team, and they anticipate placing the quarterback on injured reserve, Smith said. ADVERTISEMENT The knee “is nothing that has been an issue this season, but that’s (Mariota’s) prerogative so … ” Smith said. “Of course, you want all your guys to be here, but guys have to make decisions. It’s part of professional sports. You have to have contingency plans.” Atlanta signed Logan Woodside, a seventh-round draft pick in 2018, off Tennessee’s practice squad to serve as the backup quarterback. Woodside has completed 1 of 3 passes for 7 yards in his NFL career, which makes him the most experienced quarterback on the roster. go-deeper GO DEEPER 'There’s no moment too big for him': Why Desmond Ridder's college debut matters this week Ridder has yet to play in a regular-season game, and the only other player on the Falcons’ roster who could reasonably play the position is Feleipe Franks, who was 0-for-1 passing with one interception last year before being moved to tight end in the offseason. Smith informed Mariota of the decision to make a change at quarterback on Thursday morning. The Falcons learned Friday that Mariota planned to step away from the team. This is the second time Mariota has been benched while playing for Smith. The first came in 2019 when Mariota was Tennessee’s starting quarterback and Smith was the Titans’ offensive coordinator. “Those (conversations) are never easy,” Smith said. “You try to be truthful, whether they agree or not, those are the conversations you have to have.” Falcons coach Arthur Smith, left, had a difficult conversation with quarterback Marcus Mariota last week, and Mariota subsequently stepped away from the team. (Aaron M. Sprecher / Associated Press) The Falcons signed Mariota to a two-year, $18.75 million deal in the offseason. If he is cut after the season, they would save $12 million worth of salary-cap hit and have to count only $2.5 million worth of dead money to the cap. The decision to elevate Ridder was “performance-based,” Smith said. Mariota was 184-for-300 passing for 2,219 yards, 15 touchdowns and nine interceptions this season. His 88.2 passer rating is 21st in the league and his EPA per game (.66) ranks 20th among quarterbacks. ADVERTISEMENT The Falcons (5-8) have lost four of their last five games. “We’ve talked about trying to get over the hump in some of these close games and where we’re trying to push the offense,” Smith said. “We feel like it’s the best decision where (Ridder) is at and where the team’s at. I wouldn’t have made this decision if I didn’t think it was in the best interest of this team, not only short term but probably long term as well.” Ridder, who was 34-for-56 passing for 431 yards, three touchdowns and two interceptions in the preseason, has made enough progress in the last month that the Falcons believe the offense “can operate at full capacity” with him in the game, Smith said. “We would have had to adapt if he had had to play early in the season,” Smith said. “I feel really good about where he’s at right now. If I thought we had to restrict him, that wouldn’t be the best move and that wouldn’t be fair to this team.” Falcons running back Caleb Huntley said he was surprised when he learned of the news via social media on Thursday. Huntley’s and Ridder’s lockers are side by side in the team’s practice facility, and Huntley said he thinks Ridder is ready for the challenge. “He’s a cool guy, funny, I feel like he can command the huddle,” Huntley said. “I knew his time was going to come sooner or later. I think he’s ready for it.” go-deeper GO DEEPER Falcons will learn if Desmond Ridder can fix the passing game's biggest flaw Ridder looked sharp during Atlanta’s walk-through on Monday, Huntley said. “He’s always looked pretty good at practice,” Huntley said. “He makes the throws that he needs to, and he’s always confident, so I know he’ll be ready.” Monday was the team’s first official workout since a Dec. 4 loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers. The Falcons had a bye last week. Smith made the decision to change quarterbacks last week, but the team didn’t announce the decision until Monday. ADVERTISEMENT Running back Tyler Allgeier, who goes to dinner with Ridder and fellow rookies Drake London and John FitzPatrick the night before every game, spent part of his off week catching passes from his friend to help build on-field chemistry, he said. The team’s more veteran players will take plenty of time with Ridder this week as the Falcons get ready to face the Saints (4-9) on Sunday in New Orleans, wide receiver Damiere Byrd said. “Just go out and work with him, get our timing down, get his trust in us, get our trust in him, just kind of get in that routine with him,” Byrd said. “I’m here for whatever our coaches feel is necessary to help us win these next few games so we can get in the playoffs.” Atlanta is one game behind division leader Tampa Bay. The Falcons’ top priority is to maximize this season’s potential, Smith said, but the coach at least acknowledged the fact that evaluating Ridder now could have future benefits for the team. “There is risk anytime you make a move, but you have to be willing to take that if you want to break through,” Smith said. “We have been in a lot of close games, made a lot of progress, but our objective is to get over that hump. If it benefits us in the long term, that’s a really good thing for us.”
So first we went with Kyle Pitts when Fields was available. And then we double down the next year with London, and to make sure we got the MOST value out of those picks, we went to a coach and short term QB who don't want to and can't throw the ball. Then this year made sure to win juuuuust enough games to not pick top 3 in a year where the top 3 are all #1 overall talents then a big drop. we are Flaconing like absolute champs
this is just a tired argument. How often do teams tank for qbs and it work out? There are plenty of good qbs that went later than top 5. The new regime has drafted pretty well and made smart moves in free agency, you guys are just weird and want to complain. Team is 100% trending up for the future. Smith hasn’t been great all the time, but he’s gotten a lot out of what people called the worst roster in the nfl. this season was always just for fun until they get to build their real team next offseason
Either Ridder struggles and we end up in a better draft position, or he's somewhat good and we don't have as big of a need to draft a QB next year. I know there could be better QBs out there this coming draft, but it would be huge for him to play well enough and take a big step in year 2 with these games and a real off-season as QB1.
It would be also huge to have a QB on a 3rd round deal moving forward. Plenty of cash to spread around elsewhere in FA (OL, ILB, edge).
100% agree. If Ridder can be the guy for the future, and with the amount of cap space we will have next year, we will be super set for the future.
For the record, I'm not expecting an NFL team to actually tank. But as a fan, in a year where we have 0 shot at winning anything, I was absolutely pulling for a top 3 pick and a shot at Stroud/Bryce/Anderson. I'm fine if people see it differently, but don't understand how that's a "bad" thing to wish for. I view it as, in 3 years would I rather have one of those guys or would I rather have gone 6-11 in 2022 rather than 3-14? I'm also hoping Ridder does his best Fields/Hurts impression and we no longer need QB, and I've been saying they need to try him for like a month now, but it would be nice to have options.
Nah, you were clear. Just saying I think Ridder can be serviceable. These next 4 games are huge, and it’ll be interesting to see how similar of a playbook he gets to Mariota. At a bare minimum, the downfield passing should improve by default. I could see him being a bit of a poor man’s Dak.
I will be 0% mad if Ridder leads us to the playoffs because that shows us we have a real future. If we made it under Mariota I would have been thinking what is the point.
I think the point about taking a TE and WR with consecutive 1st round picks just to run an ancient offense built entirely around running the ball is pretty valid. Our shit ass division hurt us a lot from a tanking perspective this year. I don't know that I see this 100% upward trend we're on.. if ridder doesn't pan out we're stuck in mediocrity for several more years
To me the most frustrating (and concerning) thing about this season is that it wasn't exactly a secret that Mariota couldn't hack it in the NFL. Yet that was who the guy (Smith) who was extremely familiar with him went out and got. Then this weird injury/leaving the team thing happens this week and it's just a bad look for Smith that he thought this could work. That being said, I'm excited about the me-and-Mary-Swanson-level chance of Ridder balling coming up the next few games.
I'm willing to give the new regime a pass on Mariota because they probably decided to not try to spend any real money on a QB this year given the hell with the cap situation. Maybe they were also caught off guard about Arthur Blank wanting to pursue Watson.
Not sure how you can hold the Mariotta thing against them. The last thing they needed to do was start a 3rd round rookie day 1 and ruin any chance he ever had at developing into a real player. Anyone else was going to be a stop gap player at Mariota level. If anything it's pretty impressive they were able to win some games early on with how much Mariota sucks. This was always a tank season whether they wanted to admit it or not.
Lol you're good, I got confused and thought I had missed something. I watch every game, every week but this coming one is the first I've truly looked forward to in a while.
I really does suck that Ridder isn't going to get the live reps with Pitts to finish off this shit show. Give him all the reps and then see what we can do with more than a handful of crumpled up singles to spend in FA.
You're probably right that there were no good options. Maybe it was part of Smith's evil plan to embrace the tank and bring in Mariota and it just went too well.
Sure it makes sense if we were expecting to be good this year. We don’t throw this year because mariota sucks. We are going to have a very different team next year. If they fuck up next offseason and we are still this bad… then yea fire their asses, but I see a young team with some solid players that’s a decent qb away from being a very good team. All of our losses are basically one possession games. We are a playoff team this season with even a Kirk cousins caliber player rather than Marcus. Also can we quit pretending like drafting top 5 is the o Lu way to get a good qb? If ridder doesn’t pan out, we have a number of ways to improve at that position. We were always going to be held back until the dead weight money leaves the books.
Mariota was always a bridge to next year. Either it’s ridder or we use our new resources to go get our guy in the off-season
People crying about not using the draft to get a great qb are batshit crazy. That's the best way to do it.
Obviously we don’t need to do anything dumb but to get to competence on defense would be tremendous. If Ridder is the guy and you don’t have to expend resources on QB and can build a team around him, that would be awesome Like idk , maybe you go Davin Tomlinson, Poona Ford and a Jakobi Meyers (is he better than Zachheus? Probably) and you add some defensive help with 2/3 of the draft and you probably look like a playoff team next year.