THEY SAID IT

“I think that obviously was a game that we had lots of chances to win. We just made far too many mistakes throughout the game. There at the end we just couldn’t get the ball in the endzone and we didn’t get the outcome that we wanted. But with that being said, it’s the first game of the season. It’s a long journey. We are very anxious to get back into Flowery Branch, get the mistakes corrected and move on to the next ball game. We’ve got to do that as a team. As a team, we’ve got to put that one behind us. Our motto has always been, since we’ve been here, is to stop the streak at one. That will be our mantra all week long.

— Falcons coach Mike Smith's opening statement

“We’ve got to protect the quarterback better than we did today. There are a lot of things that we have got to do better. He was hit entirely too many times. That was a thing that we have to correct.”

— Smith on the pass protection

“Again, we said from the very beginning that Roddy was going to be ready to play. Roddy went out and played… . He had a wonderful catch over on the sideline for a first down. Roddy is a tough guy. I’m not going to sit here and say to you guys that he’s 100 percent. But he went out there and helped us move the football tonight and he will do that throughout the entire season.”

— Smith on Roddy White playing at less than 100 percent with an ankle injury

“It’s an ever evolving thing. I thought we made a lot of good strides over the offseason. We lost two parts, but moving forward, we have a lot of good players on this offensive line. We are starting to gel even more, now that the season is kicked off. We are going to see that film and we’re going to talk about it at length to make sure that we make the corrections that we need to make.

— Center Peter Konz on the play of the offensive line

“It’s football and those things are going to happen. The league is trying to protect the quarterbacks and that’s a good thing. But I think it’s just guys playing good, hard football.”

— Konz on the late hit put on quarterback Matt Ryan by Saints rookie safety Kenny Vaccaro

“I made some mistakes that I have to improve on. A lot of stuff in the slot and all of my stuff outside.”

— Falcons CB Robert McClain on his play against the Saints

“We didn’t’ have a good enough game to win. That’s the main thing that we want to leave with. We want to win and we didn’t do that. Brees is a good quarterback and he did a good job of preparing for us.”

— McClain on the defense's over all play

“It’s tough for a couple of reasons. One, is because we don’t like the Saints. We always want to beat the Saints. It was Game One and we wanted to start the season going in the right direction, but we came up a little short. We’ll move forward and get it fixed and be ready for St. Louis.”

— Defensive tackle Corey Peters on the loss

“Really, Jonathan Babineaux had a great rush up inside and kind of forced him to move. I was coming around for contain and I was free. Give a lot of credit to Babes.”