After the first padded practice Tuesday, center Alex Mack gathered up the troops and held a clinic on the fine art of the “silent snap count.”
The Falcons, who will play at least three of their first four games without fans in attendance, are working on changing their cadences. The Falcons open at home against Seattle on Sept. 13, play at Dallas on Sept. 20 with some fans, back home against Chicago on Sept. 27 and then at Green Bay on Oct. 5, a Monday.
The team announced earlier this week that there would be no fans allowed at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in September because of the coronavirus pandemic. The Packers also will not allow fans, while the Cowboys are set to allow a percentage of fans.
“We were working through some silent count and not nailing quite like we want,” coach Dan Quinn said. “After practice there was a silent-count clinic put on by one of the guys who’s the very best at it.”
Mack, a six-time Pro Bowl center, is set to anchor the Falcons’ line for the fifth season after starting his illustrious career with the Cleveland Browns.
The Falcons will count on him to start every play.
“We want to be able to change our count up a lot,” Mack said. “It’s going to be a weird year with no fans. Hopefully, we can get them later in the year.”
The Falcons know that opposing defenses will be able to hear the counts without any natural crowd-noise interference. The league is looking into allowing teams to pump in fake crowd noise.
“We want to be able to mix up our snap count as much as possible to really keep defenses not knowing our count so they can question what’s going on,” Mack said. “The more that we can do, the more we can mix it up, the better we can be.”
In addition to going on a “hut 1” or “hut 2” count, the Falcons want to come to the line, get set and take off on a non-verbal signal.
“Silent (count) is one of those things that we can get really complicated with,” Mack said. “If we can switch it up, that’s going to make it real tough on defenses.”
Quinn even turned to tight end Hayden Hurst, a former baseball prospect with the Pittsburgh Pirates, to discuss baseball signals.
“He did kind of pick my brain the other day, a little blast from the past, kind of going through the baseball signals like a third-base coach would,” Hurst said.
Quarterback Matt Ryan and Mack will have to get everyone on the same page. They don’t want to get too cute and have their own players committing penalties.
“Matt’s pretty good with his stuff,” Hurst said. “He’s got his own signals that he throws out there at us. We have to be on our toes and ready for those.”
With no exhibition games this year, Ryan wants the Falcons looking sharp in practice.
“Sometimes he’s vocal, and he’ll tell us his checks and alerts,” Hurst said. “Sometimes he’ll just signal them to us. He definitely keeps us on our toes.”
The Falcons hope that ultimately their cadence and silent count will be another weapon for defenses to contend with. It could also give the offensive linemen an advantage.
“There are definitely some times you want to change tempo and go,” Quinn said. “Code words and hand signals are certainly a part of that. Silent counts can be a part of that as well.”
The Falcons want to perfect all facets of starting their plays.
“Knowing that we are going to use all three, we decided, hey, let’s start that from the beginning knowing that some of that will change, the code words as we are going,” Quinn said. “Quite honestly, we’ll change it in the first week of the season.”
Things will start in the huddle. Move to the line of scrimmage where the silent count, hand signals and also checks will be in play.
“The quarterback has to be crafty with that,” Quinn said. “There is certainly some of it what we call dummy cadences and checks that are not accurate.”
Credit: D. Orlando Ledbetter
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