CHICAGO — Dee Alford kept running and running. His Falcons teammates went wild on the sidelines. Coach Arthur Smith had his hands raised in the air anticipating a touchdown. His team desperately needed that score with the first half ending.
Alford made it all the way to Chicago’s 13-yard line before getting tackled. The Falcons wouldn’t get that close to the end zone again until Taylor Henicke ran for a touchdown early in the fourth quarter. That came too late for the Falcons, who were dominated by the Bears on Sunday at Soldier Field.
The 37-17 loss didn’t bury the Falcons (7-9). They remain alive in the NFC South race because the Bucs (8-8) lost to the Saints (8-8) on Sunday. The Falcons will make the playoffs as division champions if they win at New Orleans next weekend while the Bucs lose at Carolina.
Let’s be real, though. If the Falcons do make the postseason, it will be because the South is that bad, not because they are good.
They’ve had plenty of chances to take control of a weak division in the final month and couldn’t do it. The Falcons lost to the Panthers, the NFL’s worst team. They beat the Colts, who are tied for the AFC South lead. Then the Falcons suffered a lopsided loss against the Bears, who were behind them in the NFC wild card race before this victory.
That evidence suggests the Falcons are an inconsistent team. Smith said he doesn’t see it that way:
“You’re talking about just in the win column. There’s consistency in a lot of different things. Ultimately, our job is to win. We lost a couple games in the last second. Get a tackle here, or a different play here on offense, you win the game (and) I guess that’s considered consistency. In the win column, yeah, obviously it hasn’t been enough.”
That’s the only column that matters in the end. The Falcons have lost three of their past four games overall and six of nine. They played their best game of the season to beat the Colts at home last week. They followed it with another flop on the road, where they’ve lost six of eight games.
At least the Falcons had a fourth-quarter lead at Carolina. Against the Bears, the Falcons got the margin to 10 points early in the final period before Chicago turned two interceptions into scores. The Falcons got blown out on a day that started snowy and windy before the weather calmed.
The Falcons had a dissenting voice on that, too.
“I think the score don’t really show how competitive the game actually was at one point,” Falcons safety Jessie Bates III said.
I never felt as if the Falcons would come back after they missed two field goal tries while the Bears ran out to a 14-0 lead. The Falcons answered with Heinicke’s 75-yard touchdown pass to Tyler Allgeier. The Bears went ahead by two touchdowns again with a 12-play drive. Then Alford almost scored after Chicago missed a field goal.
You understand why the Alford’s play had the Falcons buzzing. They were struggling to score and stop the Bears. A fluky touchdown would have been a big boost.
“Even though he didn’t score, that still gave us a spark coming into the locker room,” Bates said.
If so, the Falcons didn’t show it. Chicago gained a first-and-goal at the 3-yard line on the first drive after halftime. The Falcons held them to a field goal to trail 24-7 with 27 minutes to play. Maybe that’s the competitive part of the game Bates was talking about, but the Falcons hadn’t done much to make me believe they were capable of rallying.
Allgeier’s touchdown was one of the few highlights for the offense. Things got worse when Henicke threw his second interception of the game. Smith said he replaced Heinicke with Desmond Ridder because Henicke aggravated an ankle injury. Ridder promptly threw another interception, his 11th of the season.
The defense failed to help the offense overcome the mistakes and lack of production. The Falcons couldn’t cover wide receiver DJ Moore. He had nine catches for 159 yards and a TD. The Falcons couldn’t prevent Bears quarterback Justin Fields from making plays out of nothing. He had 268 yards passing on 32 attempts with one touchdown passing and another running.
Eventually, the Falcons suffered their most lopsided loss of the season. They didn’t come close to beating the middling (at best) Bears in Chicago. Now the Falcons must beat the Saints and hope a bad team who beat them, the Panthers, can upset the Bucs.
“The fact we’re still in it, that’s what you want,” Heinicke said. “If someone told us Week 18 you’d have a chance to go to the playoffs, you’ll take it. That’s where we are right now. We’re going to focus on the Saints, go up there and beat them, and root for the Panthers.”
The Falcons aren’t dead because the South is bad, not because they are good.
About the Author
