They have made that implausible transition from undefeated to unwatchable.
They have gone from a team that makes just enough plays to win to committing more than enough blunders to lose.
The Falcons aren’t 5-0 anymore. There is no potential for a division title waiting for them and even a playoff berth is morphed into a long shot. They are now 6-6 and look like the indecipherable crud that playoff teams scrape off the bottom of their shoes at the end of the regular season.
“I wish I could tell you what’s going on right now,” safety William Moore said. “This just sucks.”
The new Falcons are the old Falcons again. They lost to Tampa Bay for the second time this season Sunday, 23-19. That makes five straight defeats and six out of seven since the aberration of a 5-0 start led so many to believe that coach Dan Quinn was a faith healer who had fallen from the heavens.
“The truth is we’re a .500 club and we’re playing like it,” Quinn said.
No, actually they’re .500 club that looks significantly worse than that.
On Sunday, they managed to let Tampa Bay rookie quarterback Jameis Winston scramble 20 yards on third-and-19, extending a drive that resulted in a game-deciding touchdown with 1:39 left. So Falcon.
More on that shortly. Because Sunday wasn’t about one play or one player. It was about a team that missed tackles, missed blocks, dropped passes, committed dumb penalties, couldn’t run the ball (64 yard) or stop the run (166 against), couldn’t pass protect and fizzled again offensively in the red zone (one touchdown in three attempts). It also was about a team whose best player is running out of patience, and by best player, I don’t mean Matt Ryan.
Julio Jones finally popped.
The Falcons’ offense has significantly underachieved all season and for the second straight week did not score a touchdown until the fourth quarter. Jones had eight catches for 93 yards, but he failed to score a touchdown for the fourth straight game and he has only two in the last nine (after scoring four in the first three).
Jones was overdue for a venting. He responded accordingly when asked about red zone play-calling. Why they didn’t throw him the ball in the end zone? “I don’t what they are doing. They were just playing a lot of cover two (zone),” he said.
Why isn’t Falcons offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan calling fade routes or jump balls to the game’s premier receiver?
“Man, I don’t know,” Jones said. “I just go out there and do what I’m told to do. If we are getting those looks, they’ll call those plays, but I don’t know. I don’t know what we are doing down there. … We practice throughout the week throwing jump balls and fades and doing all of those things. But when the game comes, you never know what’s going to come up.”
This was a game the Falcons could easily have won. Just like the last five losses. But bad teams do this. Bad teams go 0-3 in the NFC South before they have even played Carolina and the Panthers are the opponent twice in the next three weeks. Good luck with that. To make the playoffs, the Falcons almost certainly would need to sweep the last four games, and even then would need help because they’re pretty much dead in wild-card tiebreakers (0-3 in the division, 4-5 in the NFC).
They’re also dead because of plays like this: With a 19-16 lead, the Falcons looked like they had the game won when Tampa Bay faced a third-and-19 from the Atlanta 43. The pass rush flushed Winston from the pocket and the rookie decided to run. At the 33-yard line, he looked like he was pinned between three linebackers — Justin Durant, Paul Worrilow and Brooks Reed. But Winston put his hand down and then spun out of it. (A tackle there would have forced the Bucs to try a long field goal just to tie it.)
Then Robert Alford overran Winston and Vic Beasley whiffed on him. Tyson Jackson and Jonathan Babineaux stood by and watched, each no doubt thinking somebody would get Winston down. Twenty yards later, Winston and the Bucs had a first down at the 23. Three runs and the deciding touchdown pass to Mike Evans followed.
Beasley said he thought Winston was down (he wasn’t) and he thought he heard a whistle (he didn’t).
“We’ve just got to make sure he’s down,” Durant said. “We can’t listen for a whistle. We can’t think that a ref is going to call him down. He’s a runner at that point and you have to make a tackle. … I just tried to (wrap him up) and he bounced off it and kept going. I have to make the tackle.”
Somebody has to make a tackle. Or do something. But right now, nobody is doing anything to win a game. This Falcons season has gone from fantasy to nightmare and it’s almost like 5-0 never happened.
