I'll have more detail on this when I focus on the Falcons rebuilt offensive line in this week's Between the Lines on Thursday, but the Football Outsiders have a solid piece today explaining how the Falcons have gone from laughing stock to second place in the NFC South.

As FO points out, the biggest difference between last year's debacle and this year's turnaround (besides getting rid of Bobby Petrino) is the much improved running game. Obviously replacing Warrick Dunn's 770 yards (3.2 yards per carry) with Michael Turner has been a big part of that, but having a relatively healthy offensive line with more talent (thank you Sam Baker and Harvey Dahl) have played a big part as well.

And of course, Matt Ryan has played better than you can expect a rookie quarterback to play.

The schedule gets a lot tougher in the next two months--there are no Lions or Chiefs-style patsies on the schedule until the Rams in Week 17--but this Falcons team has already shown that it's a lot better than people expected. While they may not be a playoff team, it does look the rebuilding effort is ahead of schedule.

Once a week FanHouse's resident referee will chime in with thoughts on major topics relating to officiating. We call it The Zebra Report.

Once again, the NFL's only famous official came under significant scrutiny this week ... and the game was on a national stage, being the Monday night contest between the Vikings and the Saints. There were two calls in particular that we'll check out.

Incident 1: Reggie Bush's facemask mangled, and no one saw it.
MDS already covered this here on FanHouse, but I wanted to point a few things out. First of all, please do not blame Hochuli. If you blame him, you don't know anything about officiating. Ed Hochuli is the referee, and the ball was moving away from him. If he was in proper position -- and I'm assuming he was -- he would have been watching the lineman on the backside and protecting the quarterback from unnecessary roughness. Even if he did glance over at the ball, which admittedly we have a tendency to do, he would have seen Bush's head turn from behind.

You still can't assume that's a facemask from his point of view. Allow me to present a scenario:

Falcons rookie quarterback Matt Ryan has been very hot and cold during the first month of the season. During the first half today, Ryan has been very hot, which explains why the Falcons are halfway to pulling off the upset of the day, as they lead Green Bay 17-7.

Ryan was 13-of-18 for 154 yards and two touchdowns, no interceptions and no sacks in the first half. Add in Michael Turner's 59 yards rushing and the Falcons have dominated. The Packers are clearly missing defensive end Cullen Jenkins, who was lost for the year last week. Jenkins teamed with Aaron Kampman to give the Packers a pair of defensive ends who can both play the run and the pass, but with him out, the Packers are struggling against both.

Aaron Rogers has been quite good himself (7-of-9 for 82 yards), but the Packers running game has been nonexistent.

For Atlanta to pull off the upset, Ryan will have to prove he can sustain success for an entire game. He was just as good in the first half against the Lions, but his production in the second half dropped off dramatically.

Occasionally FanHouse's resident referee will chime in with thoughts on major topics relating to officiating. We call it The Zebra Report.

The most difficult calls for an official are judgment calls. Unfortunately in football that covers pretty much everything. Rarely is there a call as easy as an upper deck home run or a ball going into a hoop. This is simply the nature of officiating football. One call which carries a ton of discretion is roughing the passer, and it has been controversial for years. As Bruce Ciskie said this past week on an email chain,

"(I've seen) defensive players rushing with their arms up to try to block a pass, grazing the QB's helmet with a hand on the way by, and drawing a flag for it. I mean, it's one thing to tell these guys they can't hit the QB, but to tell them they can't try to knock a ball down because they might touch the QB's helmet is just ridiculous."

I agree. Let's take a look at some plays from this past week.

Steve Smith is your new all time Carolina Panther career leader in touchdowns scored. It happened on a medium in that saw him sitting wide open, followed by a broken tackle and then some zipping towards the end zone.

Of course, it wasn't all that easy, because Smith slowed down heading into the end zone and nearly had the ball DeSeaned by a pair of defenders (although he wasn't heavily showboating just waltzing) before falling down into the end zone and spiking the mess out of the ball.

The sideline crew got the ball back from the fans and quickly put in Smith's hands. It is after all, a pretty memorable ball in terms of what it represents for Smith's career.

And Smith did the classy thing (which I actually kind of called: "What if he gives the ball to Lucas??!?!?") by running straight to number 21, who he previously punched in the face, and gave it over to him.

Does it make up for sticking Ken Lucas in the jaw during training camp? Um, no. But it does show that the Panthers have more or less moved past the preseason incident, at least on the face of things. Smith might not be remembered by the general public as a classy individual -- the announcers haven't even mentioned giving the ball to Lucas, amazingly -- but he's a better guy than a lot of people give him credit for, and that showed today.

Sam Baker has not gotten off to a good start on his Falcons' career. The first-round pick has played pretty well when he's been in the lineup, but he's been laid low by a concussion against Tampa Bay that has given him trouble for two weeks.

Baker had to leave last week's game against the the Chiefs, but he had to leave the game with what he described as "not a feeling of well-being." The problems can best be described as flu-like, but that isn't too far away from a descriptions of the side-effects of post-concussion syndrome, which can include: fatigue, headaches, nausea and vomiting.

Baker hopes to play this week, but if there's any worry that he's still not fully recovered from the concussion, it's better to err on the side of caution. The Falcons have a solid backup in Todd Weiner, and it's more important to get a healthy Baker back for a long period of time than to risk any chance of developing a recurring problem with concussions.

We're only three weeks into the 2008 season and no matter what happens from here, the Falcons have already bettered their 2007 season.

They still need two more wins to equal their 2007 total, but the Falcons have already shown more promise, more stars and more refined execution than they ever did last year. Michael Turner has five rushing touchdowns in three weeks--the Falcons had seven rushing touchdowns in 2007. John Abraham already had six sacks and rookie quarterback Matt Ryan has had two good games in three weeks.

Could anyone watch this game yesterday and not think that the Falcons are in better shape to contend down the road than the Chiefs? Kansas City may have been starting its third-string quarterback, but it has serious problems on the offensive line, at receiver and on defense that will have to be fixed, and it's not clear there are the players on the current roster to fix all the problems.

You're never going to be in good shape when you're starting your third different quarterback during the third game of the season, but for the Chiefs it's been a complete disaster.

With Brodie Croyle and Damon Huard hurt, the Chiefs handed the starting job to second-year pro Tyler Thigpen. Thigpen looked OK last week in a Chiefs loss, but apparently he's forgotten anything he ever learned about playing quarterback.

With less than five minutes to go in the first half, Thigpen is 2-for-13 for 12 yards and two interceptions. Until he connected on a 13-yarder midway through the second quarter, he hadn't completed a pass beyond the line of scrimmage, and he's also been sacked once.

The Falcons may be still a long ways from the playoffs, but any Chiefs' fans watching today have to wish they could be in the Falcons' shoes. Atlanta has a promising young quarterback (Matt Ryan is 6-for-12 for 127 yards and a touchdown), the better running back (Michael Turner has 15 carries for 75 yards while the shell of Larry Johnson has seven carries for 19 yards), better receivers and a better defense.

The Falcons were supposed to be the worst team in the NFL coming into the season, but after watching the first half this week, it's clear the Chiefs are truly the NFL's worst.

A lot was made about the Denver Broncos going for two at the end of their game against the San Diego Chargers. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you can go on about the blown call ... but this isn't about that. Go here if you want to moan about it.

That was the first time in a while that a team went for two to win at the end of regulation instead of the PAT that would have just tied it.

I love it!

I always believed this was the smartest move ... yet never saw anyone try it until 1995. That was the first year of the Carolina Panthers and they opening their life at the Atlanta Falcons. After a furious comeback, the Panthers scored a very late TD to trail by a point. Instead of kicking the PAT, Carolina decided to go for two and a win in their franchise's first game. There was a false start, which pushed them back five yards and they ended up kicking the point. The Falcons ended up winning in overtime.

I saw it again in 2005, when my Washington Redskins fell victim to Mike Alstott and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. After trailing much of the game, the Bucs scored a very late TD and then went for the two-point conversion and the win ... and they got it.