The Falcons’ Mike Smith: ‘These eight games are an anomaly’

The Atlanta Falcons averaged 4.6 losses over Mike Smith’s first five full seasons as coach. They’re 2-6 through the first half of 2013. “This is an anomaly, these eight games,” Smith said Monday, speaking after his formal press briefing. “We’re going to change that.”

Smith didn’t mean that order would be restored come 2014; he believes it can and will happen these next eight games. Asked if this team’s unexpected collapse is an indication that the Falcons’ grand design has failed, Smith said, “Absolutely not.”

Then this: “We plan on getting it going this season, playing efficient football and coaching efficient football. We still feel we have a very good core of players who have the skill-set that we’re looking for both on and off the field.”

So how has this gifted team lost six games?

Smith: “We’re not playing as well as we’re capable of playing. We’re not coaching as well as we’re capable of coaching. It’s a group effort that everybody contributes to.”

To be fair, these Falcons have had more significant injuries than in the previous five years combined. Quarterback Matt Ryan and tailback Michael Turner were both missing as the 2009 Falcons slid to 6-7 in 2009, but those Falcons, as Smith noted, “were able to weather that.” Ryan returned and the Falcons won their final three games to give this franchise consecutive winning seasons for the first time.

Does Smith see this season as a case of the other shoe, injury-wise, finally dropping? “I don’t think you can look at it that way. You know that you’re going to have injuries, and some years injuries are going to affect you differently or more than other years. Thus far, this has been a year that has affected us much more than any year we’ve been here. … (But) you can’t make excuses because of injuries.”

After falling 10 yards short of the Super Bowl, the Falcons made the corporate choice to revamp their offensive line and lop John Abraham and Dunta Robinson from the defense. In hindsight, did they change too much?

Smith: “We made the decisions that were going to give us the best chance to win right now and to be a relevant team in the future. Really, relevancy is what we’re about as an organization. We want to be a relevant team every year.”

From 2008 through 2012, the Falcons were 29-12 in one-score games, which was off-the-charts good. They’re 1-4 in one-score games this season. (The past two losses haven’t been close.) Does Smith see this as a case of his Falcons finally getting unlucky?

“Obviously when you compete in sports, there is a percentage that luck is involved. I think you’d have to ask a true statistics person, ‘Is it true in analytics that it does happen that way? Does it all even out?’ I don’t believe it all does. I’m of the mindset that you make your own luck.”

Teams tend to get luckier, it was suggested, when they have a good quarterback. “I agree with that statement 1,000 percent,” Smith said.

Speaking of Ryan, he has thrown seven interceptions the past two games. Has he reverted to his what-the-heck days at Boston College, where, as the most talented Eagle, he sometimes tried to win games by himself? (He had 19 interceptions in 14 games his senior year as BC won the ACC’s Atlantic Division.)

Smith: “Matt is a very competitive player. He’s going to do whatever he has to do to compete and to win football games. There’s nobody who’s more critical of himself. Matt and I talk on nearly a daily basis during the season, and sometimes he can be hypercritical of himself.”

That didn’t sound like exactly a “yes,” but it wasn’t quite a “no.” Still, when a team plummets from the NFC championship game to 2-6, blame is rarely a precision instrument. Almost everything has to go wrong, and almost everything has.

“There are so many things when you start talking about a system,” Smith said, “and really a football team is a system. Cars get more complicated, and football games are more and more complicated. It can be a small little piece that makes a car not run as efficiently or makes it stop. Right now, that’s really what I feel is happening with our football team: It’s a little piece here and a little piece there, and it’s not the same place every time.”

Even in its weakened state, his team should still be good enough to win?