Falcons’ Calais Campbell: ‘Still just too many mistakes’

The Falcons defense held the Commanders to seven points in the second half, but the offense threw three interceptions and kicked away prime scoring opportunities.

“We are playing good defense, 100 percent, without a doubt,” said Campbell, the 17-year veteran. “But there is another gear that I just us to get to. It really just starts with the mentality. I was talking to Grady (Jarrett), it’s a will inside of you. I think the fourth quarter when the game is on the line, you can feel it. There was nothing that they could do. We were just going to keep coming.”

Campbell would like to see that determination applied all game.

“We have to do that in the first quarter and for the whole 60 minutes,” Campbell said. “We just have to keep maturing as a team. This is a new defense with a lot of new guys. I think as we are evolving, we have to get to that level where we can just dominate opponents.”

The Falcons are 3-3 and set to play Tampa Bay, an NFC South foe next.

“There is definitely another gear here that I feel like we need to hit, and we need to hit it very soon,” Campbell said. “We’ll see how it goes.”

Safety Jessie Bates III believes the Falcons will pull it together.

“I think that we’ve got everything that we want ahead of us,” Bates said. “We just went 0-1 for the week. We have to find a way to create more turnovers on defense. It’s hard to win when you’re 0-3 in the turnover battle and you give up a big return in special teams. We are not going to overreact.”

The Falcons will need to pull away from the pack of .500 teams.

“We have a decision to make as a team,” Bates said. “We have another great opportunity going into Tampa Bay next week for a divisional game.”

Bates believes the defense can help the offense out even more. They played to take away Sam Howell’s major target in wide receiver Terry McLaurin, who finished with six catches for 81 yards. Curtis Samuel had four catches for 42 yards.

“Just to take away some of his main targets that he wanted,” Bates said. “I felt like we did a good job of doing that. I feel like we have to get better in the red zone. That’s been a strength throughout this year. I think they may have went 3-for-3 in the red zone today. It’s something that we have to get better at. I thought we did a good of responding in the second half with zero points.”

Falcons running back Bijan Robinson had 13 carries for 37 yards and caught five passes for 43 yards. The Commanders loaded the line of scrimmage to stop the run.

“It’s more just the game plan of what plays we are going to run,” Robinson said. “How we are going to get off and get out. It really just being more physical than the other team. We know that we can’t account for everything. It’s up to us running backs to make moves and get what we can. Get those first downs and long explosive runs that we want to do.”

The Commanders were banking on quarterback Desmond Ridder not being able to make them pay. While he passed for 307 yards, he had three interceptions.

“We have to execute in the pass game as well and make them back off,” Robinson said. “So, then we can continue to try to gash them upfront. That’s really the main focus. Main goal for us.”

Robinson, a rookie on the other end of the spectrum from Campbell, also believe the Falcons have another gear.

“From this game right here, it definitely (is bad),” Robinson said. “We need to come back, refocus and get our minds right. We have a division game next week that we need to win. We can’t come in here worrying about poor me or running slow. We just have to not worry about it and continue to push. With these long seasons, we just want to have get the best results as possible.”

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