With the season on the line, the Falcons defense was eviscerated by a toothless offense with nothing to play for. Needing help to get into the postseason but still needing to take care of their own business, the Falcons played their worst defensive game of the season.
“We did not come out to play (Sunday),” coach Raheem Morris said.
It turned out that nothing the Falcons did Sunday at Mercedes-Benz Stadium would have made a difference to their slim playoff aspirations. Needing Tampa Bay to lose to New Orleans to have a chance, the Buccaneers rallied from a 10-point halftime deficit to defeat the Saints and clinch the NFC South and end the Falcons’ season.
But the Falcons defense would have done the job by itself in the 44-38 overtime defeat. It was one more collapse in the history of a franchise that has never strayed too far from its pattern of defeat.
“Really shocked,” Morris said. “I was really disappointed in our defense (Sunday), especially based off how they’ve been playing.”
The Panthers entered Sunday ranked second to last in the NFL in total offense at 290.1 yards per game and averaging 18.6 points per game. Against the Falcons, the Panthers achieved their season scoring high and their second highest yardage total (425), eclipsing their previous scoring high before overtime.
On three of the Panthers touchdowns – a 33-yard pass from Bryce Young to running back Miles Sanders, a 12-yard pass from Young to tight end (and Wesleyan School grad) Tommy Tremble and a 10-yard scramble by Young – the Falcons were nowhere in the vicinity.
Morris on Young’s pass to Sanders off a play-action fake to Sanders, who then slipped through the defense uncovered: “Wide-open play. You’ve got to be able to cover that better, got to be able to see that. That’s a great job scheming up by those guys.”
Morris on the touchdown pass to Tremble, after a Falcons blitz was picked up: “You’ve got to be able to attach to your guy. We couldn’t attach to that guy fast enough.”
On Young’s touchdown scramble: “That was magic by him (evading tacklers) and a nice job by him.”
A breakthrough day for quarterback Michael Penix Jr. (21-for-38 passing for 312 yards and two touchdowns against one interception) and magnificent performances by running back Bijan Robinson (170 rushing yards with two touchdowns) and receiver Drake London (10 catches for 187 receiving yards and two scores) went for naught.
What made the nosedive even more striking – as if failing to tackle well or play effective pass defense on a day when the postseason on the line was not enough of a head scratcher – was that defensive coordinator Jimmy Lake’s group had been playing better in the final weeks of the season, albeit mostly against inferior offenses.
As things would have it, just such an offense lined up against the Falcons Sunday, only to throttle the home team.
“I was really fired up where we were going, the direction we were going, and we took a huge step back (Sunday),” Morris said. “A huge step back.”
The Falcons’ defense had no turnovers, no sacks and not even a single quarterback hit. Carolina was 7-for-12 on third downs and scored five touchdowns in six red-zone trips.
Again, this was with the Falcons’ season on the line.
“You can go through just about any play you want on defense (Sunday) and really criticize or critique things that we need to criticize and critique, and we’ve just got to be straight-up honest with ourselves that that was not good enough,” Morris said.
The Falcons finish out of the playoffs for the seventh consecutive season and also with a losing record for the same number of seasons. They could have at least claimed a winning record by beating the Panthers.
But Sunday’s performance, which dropped them to 8-9, was fitting. A losing team showed why it habitually finds defeat. Instead of rising to the moment, the Falcons offered about as much resistance as a sheet of ice.
“Defensively, at the end of the day, what it comes down to is winning your one-on-ones,” safety Justin Simmons said. “We just weren’t able to do it.”
And, it should be mentioned again, this was a team that pronounced itself ready to compete at the highest levels. It was thought that the training-camp additions of Pro Bowl defenders Simmons and Matthew Judon would fill gaps and lift a defense that was 18th in the NFL in points allowed (21.9) in 2023. The Falcons started Sunday 20th at 23.7 points per game and will surely drop further.
A lot of questions will need to be asked about whether Lake is the answer at coordinator, if Judon and Simmons (both free agents to be) should be pursued, and why haven’t the Falcons’ drafts yielded more up-and-coming impact players, among others.
And who is responsible for such an inept showing in such an important game? It is often said that players on teams out of playoff contention have to be motivated by the idea that they are always being evaluated, even when nothing is on the line.
This was the opposite – everything was on the line and the defense was trounced. What does that say?
“I just think we never played our best ball when we needed to,” Simmons said. “There’d be times in the first half we did great, the second half we didn’t show up.”
It’s not easy for a franchise to miss the playoffs seven years in a row. The same could be said for failing to show up when the season is on the line.
The Falcons found a way.
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