LANDOVER, Md. – The Falcons have turned into New Orleans Saints fans.
“We’ve got to take care of business and do our job first, that’s beating Carolina,” Falcons safety Justin Simmons said. “Then, I didn’t think I’d say this, but ‘Go Saints.’”
The Falcons were in a bad place after the 30-24 loss to the Commanders in overtime on Sunday. The Falcons dropped to 8-8 on the season. The Bucs beat the Panthers on Sunday and improved to 9-7. The Falcons need to win the regular-season finale and hope the Bucs lose to the Saints. If they finished tied, the Falcons hold the tiebreaker with two-regular season wins. If the Bucs win, they will earn their fourth straight NFC South title and go to the playoffs as the fourth-seeded team in the NFC.
Now, they have to openly root for their rival Saints.
Simmons wasn’t the only one saying, “Go Saints” in the locker room.
“For one, focusing on all of our preparations and handling our business, trying to go out there and beat the Panthers on Sunday,” Falcons right guard Chris Lindstrom said. “Then I hate saying this, but be a Saints fan.”
The Falcons beat the Panthers 38-20 on Oct. 13 in Charlotte.
The Bucs beat the Saints 51-27 on Oct. 13 in New Orleans.
But the Falcons defense will have to play better than they did in the second half and overtime against the Commanders.
“My initial takeaways is defensively we didn’t execute nearly well enough to win this game,” Simmons said. “The effort and the execution, the detail of in the first half was great.”
Washington rallied behind their rookie quarterback Jayden Daniels, who accounted for 354 yards and threw three touchdown passes.
“Knowing to that Daniels has been terrific all season long,” Simmons said. “Extending the plays with his legs. We never game up the big-big play, the deep ones. We just didn’t do a good enough job in the run game rallying when he did scramble. That’s what ended up hurting us. Too many mistakes in the red zone. Instead of three, it ended up being seven.”
The Falcons’ defense could not get off the field in the second half.
“A lot of it was self-inflicted,” Simmons said. “It’s not to single any guy out. We had our opportunities to get off the field several times. At the end of the day, it’s all 11 of us doing our jobs at a high level.”
The Falcons ran only three plays on offense in the third quarter.
“Jayden and them are a really good offense,” Lindstrom said. “Obviously, we had our opportunity, but we went three-and-out. When you do that verses good teams you never know when you’re going to see it again. They made really great plays. We didn’t let that deter them from continuing the fight.”
Falcons outside linebacker Arnold Ebiketie had a sack and a quarterback hit. The Falcons finished with five sacks and five quarterback hits.
But they had trouble chasing Daniels around.
“He’s up there,” Ebiketie said. “I don’t know off the top of my head who’s the hardest. I was say he has speed and give the fact that he can move a lot in the pocket it definitely makes it hard on the defense just being able to control the rush angle, knowing how to attack him, being disciplined so I would say he’s up there.”
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