Falcons held ‘players-only’ meeting

After the game he said he was the leader of the team as the oldest player on the offense and he planned to step forward before they returned to practice on Wednesday.

“I’m promise you, we’ll fix it,” White told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in an empty locker room. “We are going to get it right. I promise you. I promise you that we are going to get it right.”

White was upset with the offense after the 20-10 loss to the Vikings. He felt the defense played good, but he was disturbed by the lack of scoring by the offense, which was kept out of the end zone until they scored a garbage touchdown late.

He had no clue on what’s wrong with the offense.

“I can’t even tell you or I would try and fix it,” White said. “We are moving the ball. We are running the ball. We are throwing it. We are not finishing. We are getting untimely penalties. We are getting turnovers. When we get into the red zone we (aren’t) doing what we need to finish down there.”

Defensive tackle Tyson Jackson believes the team has been hurting itself.

“At this point, we are in a hole,” Jackson told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “We don’t have any other option, but to climb out. At this point, we have to climb out of the hole that we dug ourselves into.”

Last season under former coach Mike Smith, the Falcons, who were in the playoff hunt until the final game. They had a similar gathering and Smith printed up 1-0 shirts for the team to emphasis that had to take it “one game at a time.”

“You just have to take it day by day, this is one long hard (expletive) season,” Jackson said. “Unfortunately, for us, we did all this to ourselves. We have to get back to the drawing board and see exactly what’s hurting us. We have to make those corrections and move on.”

As one of the leaders on the defense, Jackson said his message would be simple.

“If we come out and take care of business, we’ll be right where we want to be,” Jackson said.

The psyche of the team seemed stable.

“We just have to keep working,” right tackle Ryan Schraeder said. “We have a close team. I don’t feel like anybody is going to give up at all. We got to work every week. I think it’s one of those things that we just have to grind it out. Everybody has to stay together.”

A lot of blame has been placed at the feet of quarterback Matt Ryan, who’s thrown five interception over the past two games and eight interceptions over the past five games.

He’s clearly uncomfortable in the new system, the third one he’s had to master over his career. His timing appears off on his throws and reads. His late passes have turned into gruesome interceptions.

Ryan, who had a 32 on the Wonderlic test coming out of Boston College, is clearly intelligent and not overwhelmed by the information part of the offense. He’s not the most athletic quarterback and perhaps doesn’t fit the pistol part of the offense and while he can rollout, that’s not the best part of his game.

Under much more complex systems under offensive coordinators Mike Mularkey and Dirk Koetter, Ryan did most of his damage from the pocket and in the no-huddle. In the new system under offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan, the Falcons have been reluctant to used the no-huddle offense, which Ryan mastered as a rookie, except for in traditional hurry-up situations.

Schraeder had no remedy for the offense’s woes.

“I don’t know, man,” Schraeder said. “I feel like we move the ball pretty good. It’s just little things that you have to do better. That goes for everybody. I’m not perfect.”

Cornerback Desmond Trufant was one of the last guys to leave the locker room. He admitted that the team was in a dark place.

“You just (have to) continue to push,” Trufant said. “It’s just got to be a team effort. We just got to continue to get the ball back for the offense to help them and things like that. We just have to continue to play no matter what the situation is. We just have to continue to play….We just have to keep pushing.”