Here’s what the Falcons had to say after their 24-15 loss to the Eagles:
JOSHUA PERKINS, Tight end
On his penalty:
“I still have to watch the film to see. I can’t really say right now.”
“I was just trying to come out and come back out of the my route. I ran into him. I kind of tripped a little bit.”
“It was just an unfortunate play. It’s something that I’ve got to learn from. I can’t give them a chance to make that call.”
ALEX MACK, Center
On the offense:
“They did a really good job of making plays and we needed to do a better job of making those big downs. When we have a chance to drive down the field and go ahead, we need to make those plays, get down the field and score some points.
On third down conversion issues:
“They just did a good job of combination of coverage and blitz. We just need to make plays. We can do better on first and second down and make it more manageable third downs. On third downs, in the past, we’ve done a really good job of guys stepping up and making some really big plays. We just didn’t have very many today.”
“Hats off to them.”
On the bye week
“You’d like to go in to the bye week with some success. We can use this time to reflect and really learn from this game. It’ll come down to how we can recover and what we can take away from this game.
TYSON JACKSON, defensive tackle
On the run defense
“They just had a really good game plan. They came out and executed very well. We didn’t do a very good job on defense. I’m speaking about the front seven. We just have to get off the field. It (doesn’t) matter how many sacks that you get in the National Football League. People today are pressed about sacks and sacks and sacks, but if you can’t stop the run you are going to have a long day no matter what football team you are playing. We have to do a better job. We have to stop the run.
“It’s been a recipe where if you keep a team under 100 yards, your chance of winning goes up tremendously. We didn’t do that today. We have to go back to the drawing board, figure things out and continue to get better.
“We are going to tell the truth (on Monday). We are going to look at what the Eagles game plan was and where they were trying to attack us. We are going to figure that out and get better from there and continue to work on our craft.”
DWIGHT FREENEY, defensive end
On the loss
“I think in the loss, sometimes, people put too much weight on the loss. It hurts. Yeah, you want to win them all. But there is a lot to be learned from losses. Sometimes you’ve got to take a couple of losses to figure out, hey, we need to hone this up or fix this issues. Sometimes when you win you blur over some issues and problems just because you won. Sometimes, when you lose you gain a lot more. You don’t want to make it a habit of losing, but hats off to them. They did a good job today and we’ve got some things to work on.”
KEANU NEAL, safety
On the Falcons Defense:
“As a defense, I feel like we definitely tried to finish. There are a few things we need to fix-a few plays out there. I think overall we did pretty well. There’s always room for improvement.”
On his perspective of the helmet-to-helmet hit on Eagles WR Jordan Matthews:
“Never do I ever attempt to hit someone in the head. That’s just not the type of player I am. I’m not there to play like that. [Falcons Head Coach Dan Quinn] always talks about the strike zone. You guys know I’m a physical player, but I’m not trying to hit the dude in the head. They didn’t call a flag. I didn’t try to hit him in the head. I don’t think I hit him in the head, but I didn’t attempt to hit him in the head.”
On whether he felt any contact with Matthews’ helmet or facemask during the hit:
“No. When you’re playing the game, you don’t really feel that. You have a lot of adrenaline running, so you don’t really feel the helmet.”
On the reaction from the crowd after the hit on Matthews:
“I heard the reaction, but I didn’t see a flag. I thought it was a clean hit. Like I mentioned earlier, I don’t attempt to hit them in the head. That’s not me. We’re big on the strike zone and in the National Football League they’re big on head-to-head collisions and targeting fouls. I try my hardest to make sure my hits are legal and they didn’t call a flag today.”
On what it was like to watch Philadelphia gash the Falcons defense on the ground by running for over 200 yards:
“They got on the edge a few times. There was a play where I was supposed to be on the edge and he got outside of me. I was supposed to be the guy to set the edge. A little bit of it was on my part, but I’ll give the credit to them. They did a great job. The offensive line, the running backs, they ran hard. We played our ball and did the best we could. There’s still room for improvement, but I’ll hand it off to them.”
On what he thought of the Matthews hit:
“Like I said, I am not trying to hit the guy in the head. That’s not me. Never in the game of football will I ever try to do that. I’m not a dirty player like that. I went for the strike zone, I lowered my shoulder, and I felt like I hit him in the sternum. I don’t think I had any head-to-head contact.”
On if this is a tough way to go into the bye week:
“It is. We hate losing in any part of the game. Losing sucks. We’re going into the bye week and it doesn’t feel too good. But, it’s going to help us in the long run. Two weeks with that bitter taste in our mouth and we are going to come back ready to go.”
On what happened on the screen passes the Eagles seemed to be having success with:
“They were a little unexpected. In our zone, we have to keep our eyes back and be able to fall back to it. They started pulling us out and throwing the screen backside, so we just have to keep our eyes back and be able to fall back.”
VIC BEASLEY, defensive end/linebacker
On the run defense
“We had plenty of opportunities to slow the run game down and we were unable to do that.”
“It wasn’t anything really unique. We had practice all of their scheme and all of their plays this week. They were just more successful today than we were.”
On the bye week
“There is still a lot out there for us. We made some great stops here and there, but we gave up a couple of touchdowns at pivotal points in the game. We have to be better in that area.”
On the Eagles plan
“It was kind of what Oakland did. Oakland tried to run the ball on us and once you get a running game going, it puts a defense on its heels. They were able to do that and today we were unsuccessful.
JULIO JONES, Wide receiver
On the offense
“We didn’t get in a rhythm today, that’s all it was. They are a good team.”
On how the Eagles played
“It was just us. We were doing little things here and there to get us out of whack. Everybody wasn’t on the same page today. We just have to keep working and get better collectively and as a group as far as the offense. We have to sustain drives, especially in the red zone.
