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Monday, September 10, 2007
Win one soon, or Falcons fall apart
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Flowery Branch — It’s barely week 2, and already the clock is ticking faster than Morley Safer’s pocketwatch. The Falcons have only so much time — two more games, three at the outside — to prove to themselves and a skeptical public that they, contrary to the misdoings in the Metrodome, aren’t the worst team in pro football.
To listen to Bobby Petrino on Monday was to hear a coach who believed his team wasn’t as lousy as the outcome — 24-3 against a not-very-good opponent — made it seem. “It looks like a bad score,” he said, “but we were right in the game with 7:53 to go, and halftime it could’ve been 7-6 or even 6-0 in our favor.”
And if this had been another game for another team in another season, that notion wouldn’t have sounded nearly so wishful. Even good teams have bad luck and bad days. But nobody expected these Falcons to be much good, and when their wretched opener fit those worst-case scenarios to a capital “W” … well, that lifted no one’s spirits.
So the clock’s ticking, and either these Falcons win a game before the month’s out or they’ll have become what everyone else anticipated them being and they swore they wouldn’t become — a hopeless case, a lost cause, the utter dregs of NFL 2007. And it won’t be enough to look good and lose (or, as happened Sunday, to look slightly better than the score would indicate): Only a victory will suffice. More than one would be nice, but at this point even one looks problematic.
“We need to get a win,” Petrino said, and then he laughed. (Petrino doesn’t traffic in small talk, nor does he have much appreciation for the blatantly obvious.) “This will challenge our attitude and challenge our togetherness. But we’ll learn more about ourselves and our ability to keep a good attitude, and eventually it will [pay off].”
Perhaps it will. Perhaps Joey Harrington will preside over a touchdown drive before long. Perhaps Joe Horn will prove he can still get open. Perhaps Wayne Gandy will block somebody. Perhaps Jerious Norwood will get more than seven touches some given Sunday. Perhaps Alge Crumpler’s trick knee will hold up for 15 more games. But right now the Falcons appear to possess a sound new offense but too few playmakers.
“Completing 71 percent of our passes and converting 50 percent on third down, I would have said we’d have had a win,” Petrino said, but that’s what happens when the biggest play made by a quarterback is a big fat negative. Harrington threw the ball to defensive tackle Kevin Williams on the Falcons’ first series, and Williams returned it for a touchdown that kept the visitors from getting the lead they’d planned on having. (The idea was to get ahead early and make second-year quarterback Tarvaris Jackson throw.)
Afterward, Harrington said Williams was fooled so completely he wasn’t where he should have been, a strange thing for a quarterback to say. (Who threw the ball, anyway?) But that’s what you get with a guy who has started 67 NFL games and lost 44 of them, who has thrown 79 interceptions against 72 touchdowns. Harrington isn’t out there because the Falcons saw him as the quarterback of their dreams. He’s out there because the quarterback of their dreams is unavailable.
“We’ll watch the video,” Petrino said, “and we’ll continue to work and coach. And [the players] are going to see on video what opportunities were there.”
Opportunities, alas, aren’t to be confused with reality. The Falcons thought they would win Sunday, and they lost by 21 points. Things could get really bad really fast, and if they do the Falcons will be looking toward another clock. The draft is scheduled for April 26, 2008. These guys could well have the first pick.
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