Q&A: Falcons coach Mike Smith on first practice after the bye week

5:33 pm October 22, 2012, by D. Orlando Ledbetter

FLOWERY BRANCH – Falcons coach Mike Smith put the team through a 2 hour and 40 minutes practice upon their return from the bye week.

The Falcons (6-0) are set to face Michael Vick and the Philadelphia Eagles (3-3) at 1 p.m. on Sunday at Lincoln Financial Field.

ON HOW SELF-SCOUTING: “We spent the week taking a good, hard look at things that we have to get better at. We identified them. Today was a Falcon on Falcon day where we came out here and really worked on fundamentals. We did not start our game planning yet for the Philadelphia Eagles. We’ll start that on Wednesday, so we’ll have a normal sequencing week. Big day on fundamentals today. Things we feel like we needed to do to help ourselves play better through the last ten games of the season.”

ON THE PLAYERS RETURN: “It went well. I don’t want to be too transparent. We don’t have to give an injury report until Wednesday. We’ve got some guys back. Since I gave you the nugget on (TE) Michael Palmer before he went down we’ll talk about Michael is back. That’s good to see. We were targeting this week. Michael was able to participate in practice today, so that’s a positive to get him back.”

ON COREY PETERS RETURN TO PRACTICE: “He practiced today. He practiced on a limited basis and we will up his participation as the week goes on. By rule, we have 21 days left to activate him, but it was very nice to see Corey Peters with a football helmet and his shoulder pads out on the field today.”

ON WORKING ON THE FUNDAMENTALS (OF TACKLING): “Exactly. We spent more time in our individual periods today then we normally would to work on some of the fundamental things on offense, defense, and on special teams. Our special teams period early in the practice was specifically on some fundamentals. The majority of the practice today was working on fundamentals.”

ON C/G PETER KONZ: “Peter Konz is coming on well. He’s a guy that can play two positions for us and I like the way he’s progressing.”

ON WHAT IT MEANS TO CHANGE THE MATH AGAINST THE RUN: “It’s real simple. You’ve got eight-man spacing and seven-man spacing. When you have seven-man spacing you have seven guys close to the line of scrimmage the math is even. You’ve got to do something to change the math. A guy has to whip a block, you have to slant your defense. There is a number of ways to do it. In eight-man spacing you always have one more person at the line of scrimmage than they can block. When you do that, now you are playing one-on-one on the outside. The offense will try and get even and motion the guy in and crack the defender. It becomes a chess match between the coordinators and the play callers and the players.”

ON EAGLES NEW DEFENSIVE COORDINATOR: “Most of it is about us. We’ve got to go out, and we have to execute. There will be some unknown. There will be some unscouted looks. Coach Bowles is an outstanding coach. He was the interim head coach at Miami last year and worked with Mike Nolan and Joe Danna. I’ve known Todd a long time. He’s an excellent coach, so we’ve got to be prepared for some unscouted looks, and I don’t think there will be a mass change in what they do philosophically because they’ve invested so much time into the scheme that they’re running.”

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