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Falcons 9-2 after this week?

Weatherspoon you need to play in this game otherwise Martin runs for at least 150.

Agreed, hopefully Spoon is fresh and ready, we are gonna get a huge dose of runs, this is gonna be a close one. Falcons 27-24.

Falcons by 10 this week and by 10 next week. I think this team is getting pissed.

W

They haven't shown it and the Falcons could be down Julio Jones which usually means a good hit to passing performance and Turner hasn't shown any hope of relying on him to carry the team.

Falcons playing any NFC South team on the road = Loss for the Falcons right now.

You are going on the assumption that they'll play exactly as they did last week, which I think is a BIG assumption.

They play like they did against the Saints, just two weeks ago, and it's not an auto loss, but rather a close game with us the favorites. I'm with Wease in that I don't think our offense plays like it did last week, and I think we win this game. 10 points is a bit much, but I think we win it.

It'll depend all of the health of Jones, Spoon, and Samuel.

If all 3 of those guys miss the game, there's no chance the Falcons win.

I'd love to win this game vs the Bucs but something tells me the Falcon's will lose this game. It's been awhile since the team came out and played solid offense and defense. The Bucs can pass and run the ball, love to beat the Falcons, and seem hungrier to prove they can knock off the 9-1 Falcons. My hope is the Falcons have a fire lit under them and smash the Bucs but I don't get a good feeling about this game.

If Jones doesn't play we might be toast at that point... Without him this offense lacks explosion even against a porous secondary.

It seems Spoon is back and that is a huge plus. I think Spoon is more important than Samuel this week.

V-Jax is gonna murder Robinson. We need Samuel.

Wow, worst end of game sequence ever. I mean WTF were we doing? From passing on 3rd down to kicking a 48 yard field goal, just bad end game management. Great win though, team played pretty well minus a few breakdowns. Big congrats to Julio, great game. Starting to get concerned about Bryant though.

A road win vs one of the leagues hottest teams, kudos to all involved. 10-1 bitches!

I thought the "management" at the end of the first half was worse. Bryant is usually money from that distance and I think Smitty just has to trust him there. Why Turner wanted to try to be a rookie scatback and run backward on second down is a little confusing. Actually, why Turner is still starting is confusing. Gutty win though. We are really beginning to get nicked up on defense...Assante, Dunta, Peters, Jerry. A healthy Assante picks 3 today.

Yeah not being able to get a play off on third down at the end of the first half was pretty bad. I just don't know what we were doing at the end of the game. On 3rd down just run a draw and punt. At best they are getting the ball back on the 20 with 6 - 8 seconds. Trying to get 40 yards with no timeouts is near impossible. IMO there are times when it's good to get conservative. That was one of them. Totally agree about turner, he was done last year.

I'm not sure I agree. Figure Bryant is probably accurate from that distance about 85% of the time.

I think this is another instance where you could go conservative and say punt and make Bucs work harder for points, but I dont think it was a clear cut no brainer punt decision.

OMG...now Smitty isn't conservative enough for you, Pudge? Damned if you do and damned if you don't.

seriously, I do think that was the wrong call. If Freeman had made a completion enough to have thier kicker nail in the 3 points, then everyone in the world would be screaming 'why did you try to go for 3 instead on pinning them back?'..But since he didn't, and we won, it looks okay.

Im a little bothered by the clock management and decisions. Hopefully Smitty took something away from yesterdays win.

Again, I think we've had many of these debates on this forum over the years in regards to Smitty's decisions. And for the most part I have defended Smitty.

I think it's another instance of where Decision A is the aggressive decision (i.e. going for it on 4th down, kicking the FG, etc.) and Decision B is the conservative one (i.e. punting, etc.)

And as has been often the case with the questionable decisions of Smitty over the years, I don't think one is right and the other is wrong. I think both have their pluses and minuses. One may be "smarter" than the other, but I don't think there's a clear-cut "smart vs. stupid" dichotomy here.

I tend to favor aggressiveness, and thus Smitty went aggressive, so I don't fault him really.

Going back to the 2-point conversion debate, he should have gone for two. That was the smart decision. But what I really had an issue with, not so much the decision to go for 2 or the PAT, was that he had a card that said: "Never Go for 2 before the 53-minute mark." That card needs to be revised. In the end, Smitty could have had 12 factors all going off in his head that told him to kick the PAT rather than go for 2, and as the head coach of the team, that is his prerogative.

Just like here, let's say in his mind, he figures that if the punt is successfully executed, the chances the Falcons win the game is 96%. If Bryant makes that FG, it's 99%. But if he misses the FG, the odds drop to 90%. If the punt is not executed properly, then the odds are 93%. So thus, in his mind, risking the -3% chance of losing on a missed FG against the +3% chance of winning was a worthwhile risk.

Maybe he's factoring in that the chances of the FG being blocked is much lower than the punt (the Falcons have had a punt blocked, and a couple of near misses in recent games).

Now if you move the ball 3-5 yards, or add another 5-10 seconds on the clock, then these risk factors change significantly. But maybe Smitty figures Barth's effective range is 52 yards (he's never made a kick longer than 48 at home in the 4th qtr), thus the odds that the Bucs can go 20 yards in 8 seconds is pretty low to get into his range.

So again, I don't see it as clearly this decision is right, and the other is wrong. There are degrees of right/wrong, and I'm not going to jump on Smitty's back because he made the "lesser" decision. I chalk that up to simple human error.

Matt Bryant has hit a few 50 yard kicks this year, how can you blame him for not trusting Bryant? I'm not concerned with Bryant despite the 2nd game in November he's missed two kicks. Let's wait a few more games before we start calling it a Jason Elam situation.

An interesting bit of trivia, take it or leave it...


Since 2000, only 17 times has a team ever opted to punt inside their opponents 30 yard line, which is where the ball was at when Smitty opted for the FG try with Bryant.

5 of those 17 tries occurred in the 4th quarter with less than 70 seconds remaining on the clock. Only 2 of those 5 instances came in 1-score games.

Of those 17 punts, 7 of them resulted in touchbacks, essentially netting the kicking team <10 yards of field position.

2 of the 17 were returned, resulting in a net punt of 15 yards in one case (off a 4-yd return) and a net put of 2 yards (off a 17-yard return).

2 of the 17 punts resulted in the opponent being pinned inside their own 5. 6 of the punts resulted in the opponent being pinned inside their own 10.

On the 10 non-touchbacks, the average starting field position of the opponent after the punt was the 10.2 yard line. Including the touchbacks, it moved their avg. starting FP to the 14.2 yard line.

Here are those stats:
http://pfref.com/tiny/5ZVO6



Also noteworthy...

And prior to Sunday, Matt Bryant had attempted 12 field goals of 48 yards or longer. He had made 10 of them. Both misses came during the final weeks of the 2009 season. He missed a 48-yarder in the 4th quarter against the Jets. He missed a 55-yarder at the end of the 1st half against the Bills, that was blocked.

Since then, he had connected on 9 straight kicks from 48+ yards out, 5 of which came on the road, and 4 of those came in outdoor stadiums.

That 10 of 12 mark from beyond 48 yards prior to last week is 4th best in the league, only bested by three active rookies: Blair Walsh (7 of 7), Justin Tucker (6 of 6), and Kai Forbath (2 of 2).

but that is not 'being aggressive'. there are any number of ways to seal the deal, and it was 'fortunate' but let's not ignore the elephant in the room for some 'cute stats'.

This is what concerns me a little. We have to learn how to 'step on the throat' when were playing a division foe in a tight game. Look at the end of the first half. Again : NO SENSE OF URGENCY. Bad clock management. Settling for FG's instead of TD's. And then, at the end of the game: take the ball OUT of Ryan's hands. Trust the kicker. Or, why not take the DOG penalty, back it up 5, and poochpunt it? OK, yes, they could probably block it. Or, they could run it back, or any number of things could happen.

But this is what I can't get...I mean, FINALLY Quizz is getting more touches then Turner. That is a good thing. But for the most part, when you see Turner and Cox going in, there's only 2 or 3 plays they can call. That's being clever ( getting Quizz more involved ) but not 'aggressive'. When everyone in the room isn't 'fooled' when they see those two clowns going in, it's waaay past time to put those 2 or 3 plays on the backburner...

And can anyone tell me where the no-huddle went? When is the last time we have seen it? 'Aggressive' is having the ball go through Ryan and this is the one thing he has had locked down since his rookie year. BUt the last two games, when it really mattered, I didn't see practically any of it. Why?


I have to hope that the 'new improved coordinators' ( which I must say are leagues better ) must be seeing something or know something we dont, because this season is giving me the queasy stroll down memory lane( 2010, anyone?)

I guess that's my point: is that even when we show we can play a complete game, we still lack the 'killing instinct'. Maybe going for it on those 4th and 1's last year against the Saints is in Smitty's head.

Take the ball out of Ryan's hands? Are you saying that the Falcons should have passed the ball on 1st & 10 with under 2 minutes to go in a 1-point ball game rather than try to run out the clock? If Ryan drops back to pass and gets sacked for -7 yards, everyone is killing Koetter/Smith even more. They stop the clock and risk a fumble.

Why did they go to Turner on those 2 runs? I don't know. Maybe it's because they trust him more. They trust that Turner will be able to protect the ball in that situation rather than risk a fumble with Quizz. Quizz hasn't been fumble prone, but maybe that lone fumble he had last year near the goalline has Smitty & Co. not showing 100% faith in him. Maybe it's locker room politics. Turner makes $7.5M and Quizz makes $0.5M. Maybe to justify their bone-headed decision to keep Turner at that price tag, not risk damaging his ego and his status in the locker room by going to the young upstart. Who knows? But if that is the case, then the mistake wasn't made on Sunday, it was made way back in February when the GM and head coach got together and made the collective idiotic decision that it was a good idea to go into this season with Turner as the lead back.

Turner screwed up and the O-line screwed up. Everyone knew the Falcons were going to run the ball in that situation, and as has been the case the entire year, in those situations the Falcons have overwhelmingly gotten stuffed. Like I said before, if this team has to run the ball, then they are going to fail. But even knowing that, I'm not going to sit here and say that the Falcons should have thrown the ball on 2nd & 11 with 1:45 left in the game and Smitty/Dirk is an idiot for not doing so.

Look, you guys have every right to be critical of Smith & Co. But let's not act like these are the worst coaching decisions ever made. He's made a lot more grievous errors in his time here, and we only have to look across the field to Schiano to see much more grievous mistakes with clock management and decision making.

Now, if you mean "settling" in the sense that this team is not executing in the redzone, then I wholeheartedly agree with you. That has been an issue as of late, and one of the reasons why I've been very critical of this offense over the last month. Despite the "fearsome" reputation of our offense, we've only put up 30+ points in 3 games this year, against 3 of the 6 worst teams (KC, CAR, PHI) in the league (by record). Meanwhile, a team like the Pats have put up 30+ points in 8 of their 11 games, including against 3 teams (DEN, IND, BAL) that most think will be in the playoffs this year.

But if you're suggesting that the Falcons purposefully settled for a FG at the end of the 1st half by design, then that's crazy talk.

They took 3 shots at the endzone in the final 90 seconds of the first half. That's not settling. They didn't execute on those plays, but they definitely were going for the Bucs throat.

No, what I am saying is 1 and 10 dont run out Turner and Cox, and expect a different result. Then, when it's 2nd and 11 dont do it again! Cmon, man. it's 1:42 left. Now it's second down. Turner just got stuffed for -1 yards..Tampa had just burned thier last time out. At thier 29. We trot out Cox and Turner, he loses 8. That's not being 'aggressive'. Besides the obvious 'go with the hot hand ( Quizz )' in that situation, you mean we couldn't call the ol' QB trap? I mean, we knew it was going to Turner, They knew it was going to Turner, you only need to kill a little more clock and advance the ball, or at least NOT LOSE YARDAGE, call the damn trap play! How 'bout a bootleg? A Draw play? Nope, we hand it off to Turner who has vision of sugarplums dancing in his head for a loss of 8.

Hell I would almost would have been happy with a damn QB sneak. Roll off the clock and then give it to Bryant, but you just didn't give up those 8 yards you lost.

Being aggressive is putting Turner on the bench with the game on the line.

OK, thanks for clarifying. Don't disagree that the Cox/Turner combo is telegraphing the play and has probably only been successful 15% of the time this year.

But going single back Rodgers/Snelling is probably only been successful 20% of the time, so they were kinda screwed either way.

I get it. They clearly failed with the 2 runs to Turner, losing 8 yards. But I'm not convinced giving it to somebody else in that situation nets dramatically better results. Maybe instead of -8 yards, we get -4 yards, or maybe we get +2 yards. Who knows? The odds are least in your favor if you don't give it to Turner, I agree.

Again, I guess for me it boils down to this was a situation that could have been avoided had the Falcons made better decisions in regards to the RB and OL in the off-season. Now they've made their bed, and basically have to lie in it.

Even if Smitty/Koetter make the right call(s), you still have a collective group that more than likely cannot execute.

But that's just me, looking for any/every way to blame Dimitroff for all of the team's problems...