For the second year running, the Falcons have started 2-4. This 2-4 is worse. Each of their first four losses last season came in one-score games. The aggregate margin of those losses was 19 points. Every loss this season has been by 10 points or more. The aggregate margin is 51 points.
Only one of the teams that have beaten these Falcons is above .500. The combined record of their conquerors is 11-11-1. Their first four losses a year ago were inflicted by opponents that were 17-9.
In sum, the 2014 Falcons have been losing bigger against lesser teams. This after an offseason spent seeking to get bigger and tougher and good again. This after coach Mike Smith’s declaration that last season was “an anomaly.”
Some folks — that’s my hand you see raised — believed the Falcons were due for a rebound because they’d gone 4-7 in one-score games in 2013, a record not in keeping with recent history. From 2008 through 2012, they were 29-12 in such games, which flouted explanation but had become this team’s modus operandi.
Over the first five years of the Smith/Thomas Dimitroff/Matt Ryan era, the Falcons ranked 24th, 21st, 16th, 12th and 24th in total defense. They got away with it because their quarterback was uncanny at the end of games. In both 2010 and 2012, they went 13-3 and claimed the NFC’s No. 1 seed by going 7-2 in one-score games. But was that way of winning sustainable over a longer haul? (Here we stipulate that five years was itself a long-ish haul, suggesting the Falcons got lucky longer than they should have.)
Last year their luck turned. They lost close games. Guys got hurt. Maybe, some among us figured, they’d go back to winning the close ones and guys would stay healthy this time. The latter hasn’t happened; the former has been rendered moot. The 2014 Falcons aren’t coming close.
This defense is so flimsy — next-to-last in the NFL in yardage against — that games are gone before the final two minutes, but here’s the scary bit: The mighty offense is itself beginning to flag. The Falcons were 2-for-13 on third-down conversions in losing to the Giants, 1-for-3 at scoring touchdowns in the red zone. Against the Bears, the Falcons were 4-for-13 on third down and 0-for-0 in the red zone, which means they didn’t run a play inside the Chicago 20. Matt Bryant kicked field goals of 52 and 54 yards and Antone Smith scored his weekly long-distance touchdown. That was it.
These Bears, it must be said, aren’t Monsters of the Midway. They rank 22nd in total defense. They arrived at the Dome having yielded 69 points in losses to Green Bay and Carolina. They were missing starting linebackers. And yet: They were made to look like the historically dominant ‘85 Bears by these Falcons, who are beginning to resemble the ‘85 Falcons, who went 4-12.
When a team fails, we ask the obvious: Is it the players or the coaching? Mike Smith said Sunday that the Falcons “absolutely” have enough talent to win. His actions suggest otherwise. Against the Giants, he chose to go for it on fourth-and-1 at the Falcons’ 29 with 4:40 and three timeouts remaining, knowing that failure would essentially end the game. He went for it because he cannot rely on his defense to hold even its breath. (Against the Bears, that defense held a 13-13 tie for three plays.)
At the end of Sunday’s first half, the Falcons had the ball at their 41 with one second remaining. They trailed 13-3. Ryan knelt down. I asked myself: Why not throw long and hope for an interference penalty, which would have allowed an untimed field-goal try? After two seconds of thought, I had my answer: Because Smith doesn’t trust his offensive line, either.
The units that were supposed to have been upgraded — the O-line and the D — remain such liabilities that they’ve caused their coach to dare or not dare in ways that defy reason. (The Pro Football Focus assessment of this as the NFL’s 30th-best roster doesn’t sound so ludicrous, does it?) If anything, the Falcons are worse than they were last season, which isn’t looking like an anomaly at all.
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