Here’s what the Falcons had to say after the 31-28 loss to the Vikings, who were basically drawing up plays in the dirt:
JONNU SMITH, Tight end
On what he feels are issues for the offense: “We just not hitting our keys collectively. We come in here and we pride ourselves on putting in the work we do, we come in and we work every day, we try to improve, we try to get better, it just hasn’t been going our way. Those keys and scoring in the red zone and taking care of the football, we aren’t doing enough as a unit, myself included. We just have to continue to keep working and try to maintain a positive mindset—around this time in the league, mindset if you have been on quite a few different teams and had experiences with ups and downs throughout the season and these games are key—all of them are, all 17 are key, but this is where you start to separate from the pack. We’re all kind of bunched up in the middle right now and we just need to look at ourselves in the mirror to see how we can get an edge.”
On how important it is for the team to stay level-headed while maintaining a sense of urgency: “I think you worded it greatly; I think we need to absolutely look ourselves in the mirror and say that it’s not the end of the world, but also like you said, we have to have a sense of urgency. We can’t be relaxed, and we got to go. This next upcoming game before the bye is huge, we all know that everybody in this building knows that. When we continue to come and work—because we’ve been working, we’ve been working, this team works. Things haven’t been going our way, but we have to do more.”
On what is the disconnect among the offense: “I won’t point that to quarterback play, it’s 11 of us out there and kudos to Taylor [Heinicke] coming in and leading us and giving us an opportunity to win a game, I think he did a great job, but we’re not perfect--all of us, I didn’t play perfect either, nobody played a perfect game. We got to come in and look at those plays that weren’t perfect and see how we could try to improve and get better.”
BIJAN ROBINSON, running back
On getting back to a winning record: “I feel like we need to be accountable to each other as players and not just rely on coaches but be a player accountable team. If we see something slacking, we need to make sure we’re on it before anything else happens. When we are player-led and accountable for each other, that’s when the build starts happening, that’s when teams start winning a lot of games because we have trust in each other. It all starts at the beginning of the week when we are in meetings, at practice, when we’re doing all that type of stuff. I think this game was really tough for how we were trying to roll and how we were trying to get going but we can’t let this be a sticking point on us. We have to make sure that we’re good and obviously, get over this loss, and be ready for Arizona.”
On the offense struggling today: “It was tough. It was on all of us. Whether it was turnovers, that hurts the offense a lot. And then, some minimal mistakes that we made. We have to understand that, and we have to be ready for everything that comes for us, no matter what the other team brings. We have to keep the momentum and keep the fight going throughout the whole game. The less mistakes we make, the better we play. We have to keep on going.”
On a disappointing performance so far despite high pre-season expectations: “You don’t want to lose games and lose how we lost today or some of the other games we’ve lost. I think for us, we can’t get in this hole of, ‘Alright, we lost. What do we do now?’ We can’t ask ourselves that. We need to tell ourselves, ‘This is what we’re going to do. This is how we’re going to do it.’ We’re going to keep our faith as high as we can. If we think like that, I think we’ll be perfectly fine. We have a lot of football left, but we have to start now to have the momentum for the success that we want later on.”
On losing a frustrating game today: “It’s hard. We’re all competitors and we all work so hard during the week to win these games. For me, my competitive nature, and all the guys on this team, losing a game like that is definitely a tough one to swallow. Especially on the last drive, it was hard to see. We have to learn from everything that we did today and bounce back and get better.”
On issues with ball security: “One of those was on me. Like I was saying earlier, I have to know, as a guy who just got in this league, if I’m in the space, people are coming for the ball, and that’s what they’re going to do. I need to start working on that right now and just stop that from happening. We want to get the ball in the best position. It was hard to control in some of the situations, and we made some mistakes as well for offense. But we’ll look at the film and get back to getting right.”
DEE ALFORD, cornerback
On what he thinks allowed the Vikings to win in the final minutes: “The little things. It all comes down to tackling at the end of the day, and we didn’t do a good job on tackling. Obviously, the quarterback, different things like having him contained. He was able to scramble, and we knew the game plan. We knew coming in that he liked to scramble to his right. It’s always going to come down to the little things.”
On what attributed to missing tackles: “I’m not sure. It can be bad eyes or bad footing, or you might go inside and don’t get contain.”
On Vikings QB Joshua Dobbs gaining confidence throughout the game: “You can tell that he came in confident. You can tell when he got on the field, his mindset was to attack. If he didn’t have his read, he wanted to scramble to the right. We knew coming in with him that he wanted to scramble to the right. He can throw on the run and scramble.”
TYLER ALLGEIER, Running back
On where he feels that the offense is currently: “There’s some goods, then there’s some things we can work on. Really just going through the film. Not every play’s going to be perfect and not every play’s going to be great. I think we’ve just got to keep on getting better every day and that starts with the film tomorrow.”
On whether he feels the team is spiraling: “As much as it sucks to lose, it feels like we’re 2-8. I think we’re in a really good spot. We’re what, like 4-5 right now? So, I know we’re in a really great spot to do some great things in the future. It really just comes down to learning from this film and then getting ready for next week. Being 1-0 next week, that’s really the main focus.”
On being able to find a rhythm towards the end of the game: “Just being ready whenever my number’s called.”
On how he thinks QB Taylor Heinicke played: “I thought he did pretty well. We just have to watch the film. I thought he did pretty well.”
CALAIS CAMPBELL, defensive end
On mentioning this game as the worst game of the season for him: “It’s just how I felt. We didn’t take advantage of opportunities. We need to tackle better on defense. Josh Dobbs scrambled for a hundred yards and broke probably ten tackles along the way, scoring touchdowns and finding ways to extend plays. We just have to tackle better. It really came down to Josh Dobbs scrambling. We had this issue before. It’s something we work on, and we have to be better. We have to find a way to get him down. We all have to look ourselves in the mirror and figure out what we need to do to be accountable to one another and win the ball game.”
On QB Josh Dobbs’ performance today: “We knew that he was a good athlete. We just have to get it done. We need to handle our business. It sucks because in the NFL, you have to win games. You don’t get re-dos, you don’t get do-overs, you have to win ball games. This one definitely stings but we knew what he was capable of doing. We talked about him potentially coming into the game and what kind of player he was.”
JEFF OKUDAH, Cornerback
On believing that everything is still in front of this team: “Wholeheartedly. Throughout my time here, this team has done a great job of responding. I have no doubt in my mind that we’re going to put our heads down, go to work, and have a proper response in Arizona next week.”
On whether tackling was an issue for the team as a whole: I haven’t watched the tape yet to give you a great answer. Obviously, on the back end you don’t like to see a lot of missed tackles but me, myself, personally, I missed a tackle so, you have to hold yourself to a high standard so you’ve got to look yourself in the mirror and ask yourself, what can you do better?
On the defense’s performances these past two weeks: I’ve got to watch the tape first to give you a more accurate answer. I know that’s not a great answer, but it’s just not been good enough. We hold ourselves to a high standard so regardless of what is happening in the game or what the situation is, we should be able to get our defense off the field and give our offense good field position and today we didn’t do that.
VAN JEFFERSON, Wide receiver
On how he plans to deal with this game and move on to the next: “Move on to next week. There’s things for everyone. You don’t want to lose, but at the end of the day, we have to move on and prepare for next week.”
On what needs to change on offense moving forward: “I think we have a great group of guys. I think we have great guys in this receiving core. I just got here, and I’m excited to be a part of it. We just keep rolling. When the ball comes our way, we try to make a play, and that’s all we can do.”
The Bow Tie Chronicles
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