NEW ORLEANS — Here's what Falcons coach Dan Quinn had to say after the 31-21 loss to the New Orleans Saints on Thursday night:
Opening Statement
“We knew that it would be a tough fight. It certainly was. Give a lot of credit to New Orleans tonight. I thought they played a terrific game. It came down to (protecting) the football, just like we thought it would. To finish minus three (in turnover margin) was hard on us. We weren’t able to create any defensively. They had a blocked punt. The turnovers really told the story of the game. It was hard to overcome those mistakes. Like I said, we will give credit to New Orleans tonight. I thought that they played a terrific game.”
On the blocked punt:
“It certainly did get them rolling on the blocked punt. They had a twist game inside, one that we executed a number of times, and tonight didn’t. They (broke) down our technique. It resulted on the punt being blocked.”
On mistakes tonight that didn’t happen earlier this season:
“There were some of those mistakes that we have executed (properly) before. Why did they come up tonight? There was one that came up for us, and I was like, ‘That hasn’t come up for us.’ We have played that technique. We have executed that call. For us to have that come up tonight was hard. I give a lot of credit to New Orleans, in terms of the effort that they played. We knew that it would be a battle. We knew that it would be a fight. We had a good week of preparation. The mistakes really cost us.”
On whether the buildup of the game on national TV played a factor:
“I hope not. I say that, the big reason is that you just want to treat each game as a championship game. If we placed a bigger emphasis because it was on national TV, (I don’t think so). We had an earlier game (on national TV) in the opener … and we handled that fine. I don’t sense that that was the case where we had to put more pressure on ourselves to play well. In the end, it was really the mistakes that cost us. The turnovers in the red zone, the blocked punt, and, defensively, just not generating any turnovers. That’s what made it hard on us. I am pleased with the fight of the guys. That part I know is there. If you are around these guys as long as we have (been), you know what they stand for. For us to play our best ball, we have to play in terms of getting the errors (corrected).”
On what the team can learn from this loss:
“Every game that we are in, we are hoping to learn. Our team is going to keep continuing to get better. It happened after the wins we had. That’ll continue to be the case here. Everything that we are doing, we are striving to get better.”
(Transcript courtesy of Falcons PR)
