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DEL.ICIO.USGood teams would have beaten sloppy Panthers
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Charlotte — If you’re the Falcons, you have to win this game. That’s because if you’re breathing inside of an NFL uniform, you have to win any game that folks across the way are trying to give you.
On Sunday, for instance, the Carolina Panthers evolved into bumbling hosts after they intercepted Falcons rookie quarterback Matt Ryan on the third play of the afternoon at Bank of America Stadium and returned it 29 yards for a touchdown.
Well, so it seemed. The play was nullified by the first of 11 penalties for the Panthers when Julius Peppers was called for roughing the passer.
Gaffe after gaffe by the Panthers kept the Falcons alive on the scoreboard despite Carolina eventually rolling up 401 yards in offense to the Falcons’ 268. Such gaffes by an opponent usually motivate good teams toward victory, but that’s the problem with the Falcons. At least right now, they aren’t a good team.
“Not only from this game, but we’ve taken from the Tampa Bay game as well that it’s going to be tough to win on the road, and that we have to buckle down and find ways to focus better,” said linebacker Michael Boley after his Falcons were more sloppy than the Panthers in a 24-9 loss. The Falcons fell to the Buccaneers three games ago by the same score.
Not coincidentally, the Buccaneers and the Panthers are among the league’s better teams. The Detroit Lions and the Kansas City Chiefs are among the worst, and the 2-2 Falcons flattened both of them.
So, if you haven’t figured it out by now, the Falcons can whip the feeble, but they proved again that they haven’t a clue against the strong — even when the strong is vulnerable. While the Panthers contributed to the horrible play by both teams with penalties, the Falcons did so in just about every other way imaginable.
They dropped seven passes, including at least three that would have produced first downs. They missed a slew of tackles. They converted just 2-of-13 third-down situations. They never touched (literally) Panthers quarterback Jack Delhomme on his way to completing 20-of-29 passes for 294 yards, two touchdowns and a ridiculous passer rating of 124.8. They also watched a ghastly secondary performance nearly put Panthers wide receivers Mushin Muhammad and Steve Smith in this season’s Pro Bowl in one game.
“The things that went on out there, as far as the Falcons are concerned, they’re all things that we can fix,” said Mike Smith, the Falcons’ first-year NFL head coach and den leader of a dramatically young team with 23 of the 53 players on its roster (43 percent) owning less than three seasons of experience. Added Smith, “We’re trying to get incrementally better every day, and we know there are going to be some days that we’re going to have some setbacks in terms of what we’re trying to get done.
“We don’t talk about wins and losses, but we do talk about the process. If our guys continue to work hard, we’re going to like the outcome at the end of the season.”
The thing is, you’ve had coaches who have told the eternal truth about the NFL for decades. That truth has ranged from somebody saying, “The future is now” to another guy proclaiming, “NFL stands for not for long” to the famous, “You play to win the game.”
In other words, the Falcons need to turn Smith’s “process” into victories sooner than later, especially in games like these.
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