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Sunday, November 13, 2005
Falcons earned their fall from first place
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
It was a bad loss. It was the worst loss under Jim Mora, the worst with Michael Vick as the starting quarterback. It was a loss so stupefying that it called into question not just the Falcons’ effort on this sorry Sunday but their possibilities from here on. If you can’t beat a 1-7 team in your building, should you really be thinking of division titles and home-field advantage?
“We didn’t play to our standards,� Mora said, but after a breakdown this comprehensive it’s fair to wonder just what those standards are. The Falcons entered Week 10 with the NFL’s fifth-worst passing offense and its 18th-best defense. They lost to 1-7 Green Bay because they threw the ball accurately but not really productively and because their defense induced one Packers punt over the last 38 minutes.
The Falcons had gotten away with substandard passing and defense through eight games, but against a 1-7 opponent they were exposed. The unknown Samkon Gado gashed them for 103 yards rushing, and the Falcons’ undistinguished wide receivers managed three catches for 36 yards in the game’s first 56 minutes. “We couldn’t get it going,� Mora said. “We couldn’t make a play.�
The Falcons went largely play-free all the way around. The defense couldn’t stop Gado from rumbling and Brett Favre from willing his team into Ryan Longwell’s range, and the home team’s receivers couldn’t stretch the field. The best thing any Falcons wideout did came in the second quarter when Roddy White drew a 43-yard interference penalty, but the lingering message of this game was that you needn’t interfere with these receivers to stop them. They simply don’t get open often enough.
“Everything we’ve been doing [scheme-wise] up to this point has worked,� said Vick, ignoring the raw numbers. “We believe in our scheme and our game plan.�
The Falcons beat the Dolphins last week with Vick throwing precise dinky passes, but all the dinks didn’t dent Green Bay. Vick didn’t start throwing to his wideouts until his team trailed by 16 points and had no alternative. The West Coast offense is fine in theory, but there are Sundays when you wonder if an offense based on the big-armed Vick delivering 10-yard passes isn’t a misallocation of resources. This was one of those days.
“It’s a game of narrow margins,� defensive end Patrick Kerney said, and it’s becoming increasingly clear that the Falcons’ margin is skinnier than it was last season. This defense isn’t as good — Gado is the fourth back to notch a 100-yard game against the 2005 Falcons — and opposing defenses have learned that the way to defuse Vick is to rush him more, as opposed to less. The Packers brought heavy pressure all game, and the Falcons couldn’t offset the blitzing by hitting the deep ball. The wide receivers couldn’t beat man-to-man coverage, and if your receivers can’t beat single defenders you need to find new receivers. (The Falcons thought they had. They might be rethinking about now.)
No longer are the Falcons tied for their division lead. They’re not even alone in second place. They have one gimme game the rest of the way — New Orleans here — and when you lose at home to a 1-7 team you forfeit the right to call any game a gimme.
“Sometimes the ball doesn’t bounce your way,� Vick said, but a big-time team has to be good enough to win even on a day crammed with lousy hops. If there was a lesson imparted Sunday, it was that the Falcons, for all their bold talk and lofty aspirations, aren’t yet big-time enough. They’re still 6-3, but suddenly it’s a shaky 6-3.
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Two old rivals show the value of one measly point
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Athens — They’d met 108 times before, and you’d have sworn the old enemies could do nothing to top the thrills and spills that had come before. From Michael Johnson jumping over Horace Willis to Jasper Sanks being stuffed on the goal line, the Deep South’s oldest rivalry had generated pretty near everything under the sun and moon — fire hoses included.
But the Georgia-Auburn series, splendid as it has been, has never had a better game than this. Meeting No. 109 began pregnant with the usual meaning — the Bulldogs could clinch the SEC East; the Tigers could stay alive in the SEC West — and it ended with the wildest finish imaginable. Indeed, the signature play of No. 109 beggared all belief: A fourth-down pass became a game-winning touchdown…and then it became something else.
Fourth-and-10, Georgia needing one more stop to crown itself champion of its division. Brandon Cox found Devin Aromashodu flashing over the middle, and this looked for all the world to be Auburn’s version of 70X Takeoff, the famous play that became the winning Georgia touchdown on fourth-and-14 that cold day on the Plains three Novembers ago. Aromashodu seemed sure to score, but Paul Oliver, hoping against hope, trailed the play and punched at the ball, and sure enough it popped free.
But Auburn’s Courtney Taylor fell on the fumble in the end zone. Touchdown, yes? Touchdown, no. Because the offense can’t advance a fourth-down fumble — it can only recover one — the ball was placed on the Georgia 3 with 1:52 remaining. Three Tiger runs gained nothing, but in a weird way Auburn was better served killing the clock before John Vaughn kicked the gamer at 0:06. Auburn won by the skinniest of points, but sometimes a point weighs a ton.
For some reason, a one-point margin seemed written on the autumn wind. In the first 108 convocations, Auburn had outscored Georgia 1,619 to 1,618. Lo and behold, the Tigers led No. 109 by a point after one half, a point after three quarters. Then Thomas Brown swept right to put Georgia ahead 26-21, and the Bulldogs wanted (and needed) to go for two. But some members of Georgia’s kicking team had dashed on the field, and the Bulldogs were called for delay of game before they could sort things out. (Then, for good measure, they were called for another.) Georgia wound up kicking for one and will forever rue the point it didn’t get.
Auburn would retake the lead on Karibi Dede’s return of Brannan Southerland’s fumble inside the final 10 minutes. Georgia would nose back ahead on Brandon Coutu’s field goal with 3:25 left, and soon the Tigers faced fourth-and-10 at their 35 and the Bulldogs were one snap from the Georgia Dome. But, just as the Michael Johnson catch in 2002 changed the outcome of both divisions, Cox hit Aromashodu and the identity of the SEC East winner remains in doubt, at least until Georgia beats Kentucky next Saturday.
Yes, Georgia was unlucky to lose by a skinny point, but the Bulldogs, truth to tell, never seemed to have a hold on this game. Auburn was clearly the stronger side — Kenny Irons, looking like a latter-day Bo Jackson, rushed for 179 yards — and it became a question of whether Georgia’s finesse could trump power. In the end, finesse failed. The Bulldogs wound up kicking three field goals, and Auburn needed only the one at the end.
Georgia can and surely will still win the East, but even that knowledge came as cold comfort this frenzied night. For the second game running, the Bulldogs had come up empty in a big-time test. They’ll fall out of the Top 10, and as Saturday night became Sunday morning they had to be chastened by this realization: If the Evil Genius Spurrier hadn’t beaten the Hated Gators for them, the Bulldogs would have been eliminated. No fire hoses were needed to douse this Georgia party.
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