Before moving on to prepare for San Francisco, the Falcons took a long hard look in the mirror on what coach Dan Quinn calls “Tell the Truth Monday.”
The mirror didn’t lie about the penalties, red zone woes and turnovers that sabotaged their efforts against Tampa Bay on Sunday at the Georgia Dome.
“We really need to play more principles and for us to be at our best, the defense has to be ball-hawking,” Quinn said. “Offensively, (make) great decisions on the football. That’s really where the truth came out today when we met with the team.”
The truth is that the Falcons — after zipping up and down the field and amassing 498 yards — are kicking themselves for letting a victory get away against the Bucs. The 14 called penalties and four turnovers negated the positives from the NFC South matchup.
“You can go out there and throw for 300 or 400 yards,” wide receiver Roddy White said. “Rush for 150 yards, but if you turn the ball over four times, you’re going to get beat. That’s the league. That’s why defenses go out there and say we just need turnovers. They don’t worry about yardage that they give up nowadays. If they can just get the ball from you, it changes whatever you do.”
The Falcons were able to move the ball with ease against Tampa Bay.
“We had two 12- or 14-play drives, where we were eating up the clock,” White said. “We are taking eight minutes off the clock and then we turned it over. No points and 16 minutes are gone.”
The Falcons continued to stall in the red zone against the Bucs. But White doesn’t believes that any major is wrong with the offense or the play-calling.
“I just feel like you’ve got to hold onto the ball,” White said. “You can’t give it away. We’ll be just fine … if we could just keep pressing and keep doing what we do when we get down there, hold onto the ball and push it in. Even if we get field goals, I’m fine with that. As long as we come away with no points and we have an eight-minute drive, that’s very frustrating. That’s very frustrating to go that long and not get it done.
“We didn’t cash-in. That’s what it is. When you don’t cash-in when you are in the red zone, you usually get beat.”
The Falcons committed four turnovers, which led to all 20 Tampa Bay points in regulation. The Falcons have committed 12 turnovers over the past four games.
The Falcons are minus-2 in turnover differential, which ranks tied for 21st in the league. The Falcons have 12 takeaways to go with 14 turnovers (seven interceptions and seven fumbles.)
In addition to the turnovers, the Falcons were called for 14 penalties which resulted in 124 loss yards. Three penalties were declined. The 11 penalties and 124 yards were both season-highs.
The two false starts by left guard Andy Levitre and the two defensive offsides (Adrian Clayborn and Vic Beasley) are simple execution and alignment mistakes, which are frowned upon by the coaches. The rest of the penalties were errors of commission, which are generally looked at more favorably by the coaches.
“For us, it’s clean things up because I don’t think it’s something that’s broken as much as it is things that we can get sharper at,” Quinn said. “The reason why I’m able to say that is because over the first four games, where we were at in terms of the turnover margin. For me, it’s a clean-up and not a fix.”
The defense held the Bucs to under 300 total yards and under 200 yards passing. But they couldn’t stop the Bucs on a 15-play, 68-yard drive to set up a field goal in overtime.
“We have high expectations for ourselves in those moments,” linebacker O’Brien Schofield said. “Even though they scored, we still gave our offense a chance to win it for us. That’s all that we’ve always asked for is just give us a blade of grass to play for.
“It’s unfortunate that we weren’t able to stop them earlier and get the ball back sooner.”
The defense was playing with three reserves in the secondary in overtime after injuries to cornerbacks Robert Alford (groin) and Desmond Trufant (lower back).
“We have to look at ourselves and understand that yeah, we are 0-2 in the division, but that doesn’t stop the process of how we do things,” Schofield said. “It’s still all about us. We just have to play better. More attention to detail. More of a sense of urgency in the moments where we know it’s time to finish the game.”
Linebackers Justin Durant and Brooks Reed also believe that the defense could have helped by creating more turnovers.
“It’s major because coach (Quinn) always preaches about the ball,” Durant said. “We didn’t make enough plays on defense to get the ball out.”
Reed said: “We kept it competitive and played hard. We didn’t make the plays when we needed. That just needs to improve. Making plays and getting after the ball.”
White believes the Falcons are still headed in the right direction.
“We just need to go 6-2 from here on,” White said. “12-4, ain’t that pretty good? There you go. That’s what we’re looking for.”
