Buccaneers

Buccaneers HC Todd Bowles gave an update on WR Jalen McMillan, who hasn’t played this season following a neck injury during the preseason that Bowles said included broken bones in McMillan’s neck.

“He’s still in the brace, but he’s getting better. He’s getting better,” Bowles said, via Ira Kaufman. “But necks are not like ankles or arms where you see progress where you can lift on ‘em and work ‘em out when you’re still on the brace and you say, ‘Oh, he looks good today. He’s getting stronger, he is getting faster.’ It’s a neck injury. And those, like you said, it’s a life thing if it doesn’t heal the right way. So they’re saying it’s healing the right way.”

“Until he puts on a helmet and it starts working out and everything else, you just don’t know,” Bowles added. “I don’t know what getting better means as well because they say it’s not like you can see inside the neck and say, ‘Well he’s moving it a lot better.’ I’m sure he can turn it, but it’s just a matter of the bones healing the right way, and those are such difficult bones to judge inside the neck. And I’m not in a medical profession, but he’s coming along. I think he’s in good spirits, and I think he’s getting a lot better. I just don’t know how close.”

Falcons

Falcons OC Zac Robinson and OL coach Dwayne Ledford spent time on the phone asking themselves why the team isn’t blocking the right people.

“That’s been the biggest issue the last two weeks,” Robinson said, via The Athletic. “It would be different if we were getting different looks in the game than we got at practice. At the end of the day, we just have to go do it. We’ve got to get it fixed … right now.”

Falcons HC Raheem Morris reiterated that the team needs to do a better job of winning in the trenches.

“When we don’t play well up front, we’re not going to play well,” Morris said. “We have to be able to play better up front. We know how to move the ball. We need to play better, there’s no doubt about it. There’s nothing that we need to do that we’re not capable of doing.” 

Falcons OL Chris Lindstrom said Miami didn’t show the team anything that they weren’t prepared for.

“There wasn’t a look the Dolphins presented that we didn’t know,” Lindstrom said. “We just need to communicate it. We take ownership for that loss. The staff is putting us in the right position, and we as players need to take ownership and execute, and that’s it. It’s that simple. They are preparing us. We are not doing a good enough job.”

Robinson added that wholesale changes to the offense will not be coming and they need to execute better.

“You want to have an identity, and you want to have counterpunches off your identity,” he said. “We do feel good about our run mixtures. We do feel good about our pass mixtures. It’s coaching, play calling and execution all mixed together.”

• Falcons LB Leonard Floyd was fined $11,593 for a facemask.

Saints

Saints rookie QB Tyler Shough said he’s looking forward to the opportunity of being able to lead the offense as the starting quarterback.

“I’m going to make mistakes,” Shough said, via PFT. “So, I’m going to do everything I can to learn from those mistakes, and then just have fun doing it,” Shough said. “What a great opportunity to go out there and just let it rip.”