Bump: Falcons give Seahawks a chance to right wrongs from loss to 49ers
Sep 23, 2022, 3:48 PM
Tyrion Davis-Price of the San Francisco 49ers runs with the ball against the Seattle Seahawks at Levi's Stadium on September 18, 2022. (Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images)
(Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images)
The Seahawks enter Week 3 at 1-1 and will host the Atlanta Falcons, who have dropped each of their first two games of the season.
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While the matchup may not seem like much at first glance, former NFL receiver Michael Bumpus thinks facing the Falcons is a good thing for a Seahawks defense that didn’t do too well last week against the San Francisco 49ers. He broke down why during Thursday’s Bump and Stacy on Seattle Sports 710 AM.
“So last week, what beat them? It was that run game,” Bumpus said.
The 49ers piled up 189 yards on the ground on their way to an easy 27-7 win over the Seahawks, and that helped them control the clock for 38:20 to Seattle’s 21:40.
The Falcons may be 0-2, but they’ve been solid in the run game, coming in at 16th in the league entering Week 3. That’s in part because they have a mobile quarterback in Marcus Mariota.
The 49ers in Week 2 pulled guards and tackles regularly, employed a fullback to lead block and utilized a lot of deception.
“I watched film on the Falcons, they do a lot of the same stuff,” Bumpus said. “The motioning, they play with a lot of 12 personnel and 21 personnel – 12 means that there’s one running back and two tight ends, 21 two running backs and one tight end. They do a lot of that stuff and they compact the box.”
The 49ers are a better team and have better personnel than the Falcons, Bumpus said, but because they do a lot of the same things as San Francisco offensively, that gives the Seahawks the opportunity to improve in areas they struggled last week right away.
“They’ll have that that backside tight end, boom, blow up the D-end, they’ll option the D-end, they’ll do the guard-tackle pulls, they do a lot of the same things that the 49ers do. Again, they’re not as good as the 49ers, so this is going to be an opportunity for these guys to work on the stuff that beat them last week,” Bumpus said.
So what’s Bump going to keep a close eye on with this Seahawks defense?
“Those linebackers need to step up and take on those guards with some tenacity. It felt like they were catching a little bit,” he said. “That’ll give those ends time to practice being patient and reading and taking on that tight end with your inside shoulder, keeping everything inside and not taking the bait and going outside. So schematically, this is good for them. It’s good for Clint Hurtt, too, to correct some of his wrongs and coach these guys up. It’s gonna be a big learning experience for these dudes this week.”
Listen to Thursday’s Bump and Stacy at this link or in the player below.
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