The long-lingering dark cloud that has been hovering over the Falcons’ complex was gone on Monday.
No longer can their critics contend that the Falcons are regular-season wonders who can’t win in the playoffs.
After downing the Seattle Seahawks 30-28 with a 49-yard field goal kick by Matt Bryant with eight seconds to play Sunday, the Falcons can now exhale. Having a running game really helps.
“It just lets us breathe a little bit,” running back Michael Turner said. “Now, we can go out there and play the way we’re capable of playing.”
The Falcons find themselves just 60 minutes of football away from the franchise’s second trip to the Super Bowl.
The No. 1 NFC seed (14-3), Atlanta faces second-seeded San Francisco (12-4-1) on Sunday at the Georgia Dome.
The 49ers have a couple clouds of their own. They haven’t won a road playoff game since 1988 and, as a No. 2 seed, they’ve never reached the Super Bowl. In the only previous playoff meeting between the former NFC West foes, the Falcons prevailed in the divisional round on their way to the Super Bowl after the 1998 season.
The Seattle game lifted a major burden from the team’s collective shoulders. The Falcons had long grown tired of hearing about playoff failure and the insinuation that they choked in the postseason.
“We’ll be ready to play,” linebacker Sean Weatherspoon said. “Everybody talks about playing loose. Playing with confidence is what I like to talk about and we have some confident guys.”
Their critics still have some ammo. The Falcons did cough up two 20-points leads to Seattle as the defense collapsed in the fourth quarter.
Also, kickoff specialist Matt Bosher mis-hit what was supposed to be a squib kick in the last eight seconds. The victory was not secure until wide receiver-turned-defensive back Julio Jones hauled down an interception on a Hail Mary attempt as time expired.
But perhaps the biggest source of relief was that the Falcons re-discovered a rushing attack that has been missing all season.
For Turner, 26 carries for 167 yards used to be regular day at the office. Under the Falcons’ revamped offense, those carries have been split up, but for the first time this season, the net results were the same on Sunday.
Against Seattle, Turner and Jacquizz Rodgers combined to rush for 162 yards on 24 carries. (Quarterback Matt Ryan had a rush for six yards and Jones lost a yard on a reverse.)
The team’s 6.4-yards-per-carry average was 2.7 yards better than its 3.7 regular-season average.
Using tosses and pitches to the outside, offensive coordinator Dirk Koetter gave Turner a chance to get up a head of steam. Those calls also gave the blockers some better angles. The Falcons previous rushing high this season was 146 yards against Philadelphia on Oct. 28.
“We knew we couldn’t be one-dimensional,” Turner said. “We had to keep them off balance a little bit.”
The offensive line did a superior job of springing the running backs.
The left side of tackle Sam Baker and guard Justin Blalock helped turn Turner loose on one 33-yard gain. On the right side, tackle Tyson Clabo and guard Peter Konz sent Rodgers on the way to a 45-yard gain.
“It’s something that we had to get going because they play eight men in the box,” Baker said. “They were going to dare us to run it. We had some good schemes.”
The Falcons used fullback Mike Cox more than usual in their “21” — two backs, one tight end — personnel package. Normally, they uses the “11” package — one back, one tight end — with three wide receivers.
Cox played 28 of 62 offensive snaps (45%) against Seattle.
“We needed to be able to run the football and we got it done,” Clabo said.
The Falcons will need the rushing attack again against San Francisco, which gave up 294.4 total yards per game, third-best in the league during the regular season. The 49ers yielded 94.2 yards rushing per game (fourth) and 200.2 yards passing (fourth).
“When we have the type of offensive roster that we have, we feel like that we have the ability to throw the football and run it,” Falcons coach Mike Smith said. “It’s really going to be based on how people try to defend us.”
