Once the bitterness of the Falcon's 28-24 NFC Championship loss to the San Francisco 49ers wore off, I was left to ponder where the team goes from here. The Falcons are the kind of team that, as a fan, you both cherish and dread: the really good team that, for some unknown reason, just can't get over the hump and achieve greatness.
Everybody knew going into the playoffs that the Falcons had flaws, among them being an anemic pass rush, a sub-par rushing attack, and spotty pass coverage. What nobody anticipated were the offensive struggles the Falcons would have in the second half of both the Seattle and San Francisco games.
In both contests, the Falcons came out blazing and looked like they were going to blow their opponents out of the water. However, after sprinting out to respective 20 and 17-point leads in the first half of each game, the offense went into a shell in the second half. Against Seattle the defense also collapsed, resulting in a last-minute desperation drive that salvaged the game thanks to Matt Bryant's clutch field goal kicking.
You can talk about conservative playcalling on Dirk Koetter's part, or perhaps chide Mike Nolan for not coming up with a scheme to contain Zach Miller or Vernon Davis, but I think the problem goes deeper than that. For some reason the Falcons just don't know what to do with success. As a team they seem to fall asleep at the wheel when they're ahead, only waking up at the last minute to steer themselves clear of the oncoming cliff. It was just a matter of time before their luck ran out, and against the 49ers it finally happened.
The team's inability to put together a full sixty minutes of football became a disturbing pattern throughout the season. Time and again you would hear "We haven't played a complete game of football yet" from the Falcons locker room. After yesterday's game, we're still waiting.
This particularly troubling team characteristic was evident from the season's very beginning, as Atlanta jumped out to a 20-0 lead on Denver with six seconds left in the half. Denver promptly outscored them 21-7 the rest of the game, resulting in a closer-than-necessary 27-21 final.
The ebb and flow of that game was not alarming in and of itself, but the problem was that the collapses kept happening. In a game eerily reminiscent of the NFC Championship, Atlanta went up 24-14 on the Carolina Panthers only to let them claw their way back to a 28-27 lead. It took a miraculous 59-yard completion to Roddy White in the final minute to get them within range of a field goal and a 30-28 victory.
And on and on it went. The dreadful Raiders were allowed to tie their game at 20 with forty seconds left, only to watch Matt Bryant kick a 55-yard game-winning field goal as time expired. The Dallas Cowboys crept to within three before Bryant's foot secured a 19-13 final. A 10-point lead against the New Orleans Saints was squandered in an eventual 31-27 loss. A 17-point cushion in the late-season rematch was nearly surrendered as the Saints rang up 13 straight points. It was official: the Falcons offense got leads, but the Falcons defense blew them. And when that happened, the Falcons offense couldn't turn it on again.
So who's to blame? Certainly some of it falls on Matt Ryan. Just when you figured he had finally graduated to the level of a Brady or a Manning, he would do something so deer-in-the-headlights that it made you wonder if you were wrong all along. Every once in a while you would see cracks in the façade - a poorly-thrown duck of a pass here, an interception thrown into triple coverage there - that would make you question everything. His fumbling away of a snap in the NFC Championship game was only the latest in a line of occasionally baffling plays that make you wonder if Matty Ice can really deliver against top competition when it counts.
Of course, a lot of the blame can be placed on the head of Mike Smith. At the end of the day he's the one that has to keep the team prepared, and more importantly, focused. Their inability to stay focused seems to be the team's Achilles heel at this point, and that's not something that can be easily fixed. Critics say that Smith is too passive and his team reflects that, which I don't necessarily believe. But their second-half disappearances against Seattle and San Francisco indicate that there's a definite issue with the team putting it in cruise control when things are going well.
That's Smith's problem to solve. And if he can't do that, Arthur Blank will be forced to find a coach who will.
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