​Carolina DBs and Julio Down by the Schoolyard: A GIF story

Atlanta Falcons receiver Julio Jones caught 12 passes for 300 yards against the Panthers on Sunday—the sixth player to ever do so in NFL history. He was targeted 15 times. Other receivers on the field included "Taylor Gabriel" and "Aldrick Robinson," which are definitely witness protection pseudonyms. Jones told the MMQB that the Panthers "singled him up all game"—which, considering the other names on the field, sounds like a grievous coaching error. So, what actually happened? Let's look at the targets.

On the first Atlanta play from scrimmage, Jones is isolated against rookie corner James Bradberry, the Josh Norman replacement at the bottom of the screen. This is a tough route to come back on for Bradberry, so I wouldn't ding him too hard for this completion, but he could have done a better job tackling.

On the second, Jones runs an in-route against zone from the top of the screen. This is another pretty easy reception. No challenge from the Panthers yet.

On the third… Hey, would you believe that the Falcons got Julio Jones involved early? They did. Jones actually got pushed down by the cornerback, but the play-action by Atlanta bought enough time for him to get up and for Ryan to find him sneaking behind the middle line of the zone defense.

After a little time off, the Falcons went back to Julio on this deep shot against Daryl Worley. Worley, the Panthers' third-round pick, was undressed on this play. "If he's even, he's leaving," as the old NFL axiom about wide receivers goes, and Jones was two steps ahead of Worley seconds into the play.

After Panthers corner Bene Benwikere broke up a deep pass to Jones, he got a little excited, so Jones went over the top of him in what looked like Cover-3 and deep safety Kurt Coleman couldn't get there in time. Keep in mind that this is third-and-17, and Carolina got zero pressure. This became the running theme of the day. Carolina was able to play Cover-2 a lot last season because of its interior pressure, but they weren't getting any of that on Sunday, which meant more zone looks. There's a lot of Cover-3 on the rest of Jones' highlight reel.

Benwikere again drew Jones on this post. This was another easy throw into soft coverage.

This touchdown took pretty much the exact same coverage and route combo. Jones does a post into what looks like Cover-3, and he outruns the safety to the edge.

I came into this exercise expecting to find that the Panthers rookie cornerbacks had been the problem. Worley wasn't fast enough to keep up with Jones, but most of the time the Falcons receiver was generating after the catch against third-year man Benwikere. Contrary to Jones's post-game assertion, Carolina didn't get much of a chance to single him up. This sort of comes back to the real problem: NFL defenses are delicate houses of cards, and with the pass rush incapable of touching Ryan, Carolina couldn't deal with Jones.