Atlanta Falcons head coach Mike Smith has insisted that he saw an improvement from his players in their 27-23 pre-season defeat to Baltimore Ravens.

Smith said that in particular he wanted his side to improve their running game and he was pleased with the performance in that area.

"Our goal tonight was to improve in the areas that we felt like we needed to improve from week one," he told the club's official website. "I thought that we did that.

"There were some things in the Cincinnati Bengals game that we wanted to make sure that we addressed. We wanted to improve our run game; I thought we did a nice job of running the ball in the first half.

"We did a good job with the pass protection as well. We're a team that prides itself on not being penalised, and we had way too many penalties in the ball game. I think we had nine penalties, a lot of procedural penalties that need to get corrected."

Smith has been in charge of the Falcons since 2008.