If there’s one exhibition game to take semi-seriously, it’s the third. The first is a training exercise for guys who probably won’t make the team. The second offers a slightly longer look at the starters, the emphasis on “slightly.” The fourth isn’t worth playing, which is why first-teamers don’t.
The third exhibition is targeted by every NFL team as its dress rehearsal. Seeking to simulate a regular-season week, they even work up a game plan — although Falcons coach Mike Smith emphasized this week that just because a plan exists doesn’t mean everything is in it. Because who cares if you win your third exhibition? Who cares if you win any exhibition?
Some fans believe that winning in August sets a tone for September and beyond. It doesn’t. No tone can be set when your starters never play a second-half down. Preseason is significant for rookies and fringe players, but that’s about it. For those who think otherwise, we cite a famous local example.
The 1990 Falcons were coached by Jerry Glanville, just arrived from Houston. Glanville did the Glanville thing, talking big and encouraging his men to play like maniacs. It was no shock that a preseason scrimmage in Macon against Buddy Ryan’s similarly macho Eages devolved into a series of fights that ran the length and a breadth of a high school field.
This stirred the local populace. (“Glanville’s got ’em fired up!”) The Falcons won their first exhibition behind a fourth-quarter comeback led by the free-agent quarterback Gilbert Renfroe. They would win the next three exhibitions as well, finishing the preseason 4-0, and suddenly the Falcons were, on no tangible evidence, the hottest game in town.
A rout of the Oilers, Glanville’s former employer, touched off the regular season. Then reality descended, as reality will. The team that had won four games that didn’t count won only five that did. Gilbert Renfroe wouldn’t throw a regular-season pass as a Falcon.
Twenty-four years later, the Falcons were in no danger of an unbeaten exhibition campaign, having lost 32-7 in Houston. Saturday night brought the Tennessee Titans back to Georgia — they practiced against the Falcons in Flowery Branch earlier this month — and that smidgen of familiarity might have bred a dollop of contempt.
The Falcons scored a touchdown on their first possession, Matt Ryan finding Devin Hester on a slant. The second series ended — after two offensive-interference penalties against Roddy White and a non-call against the Titans on a pass to Julio Jones — with Ryan getting miffed, which doesn’t happen often. He had scrambled and slid, and linebacker Zach Brown offered unchoice words and a hand to Ryan’s facemask.
Center Joe Hawley stepped forward to defend his quarterback’s hide and honor, as did tackle Ryan Schraeder. This surely pleased Arthur Blank, who over the winter equated the Falcons’ failure to retaliate after a New Orleans late hit against Ryan as an absence of toughness. (Schraeder was flagged for unnecessary roughness, for which Blank may double his salary.)
There was more pushing and shoving later in the half, though nothing to touch the Macon Mayhem of 1990. Ryan delivered another touchdown pass, although the bulk of the work on this one fell to Jones, who pivoted and broke a tackle and turned a first down into 52 yards and six points.
It would soon become 17-3, the Falcons having outgained Tennessee 199 yards to 54. They were making the effort to run the ball — Jacquizz Rodgers gained 33 yards on the first four possessions — and the offensive line, on which much depends, appeared to have gained an edge. (Although Jake Matthews, starting at left tackle, was called for holding on a running play.)
Nate Washington then beat Desmond Trufant for a 63-yard touchdown to make the score 17-10. The Falcons could have kicked a field goal in the half’s final minute, but went for it on fourth-and-1. Rodgers got nothing. Still, the Falcons’ starters had won the first half of the only exhibition that slightly matters, and they looked pretty good doing it.
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