Calvin Ridley watched Greg Zuerlein’s onside kick trickle along the turf on the other side of the field. Four of Ridley’s Falcons teammates, all paid professionals, didn’t seem to know they could recover it before it travels 10 yards. The ball kept rolling, the Falcons kept watching and then C.J. Goodwin pounced on it for the Cowboys as soon as he legally could.
Six plays later, the Cowboys kicked a field goal to win 40-39. They’d trailed by 19 points at halftime. They were down by 15 with five minutes to go. The Falcons would have won the game if any one of the Falcons players who watched that kick roll instead recovered it.
“It’s just crazy,” Ridley said. “I wish it was my side. I just can’t believe it, man. We’ve got to get there. I wish it was me. I don’t know. We take it as a group. We lost as a group.”
That’s what Ridley should say. It’s not really what happened. The reality is that the Falcons (0-2) had their best offensive performance in years but lost because their defense wilted after a great start and their special teams botched the finish.
According to the Elias Sport Bureau, NFL teams were 444-0 since 1933 when scoring at least 39 points with zero turnovers. The Falcons became the first to hit those marks and lose. Dan Quinn’s Falcons blew a 25-point lead in the Super Bowl. Those stakes made it worse than this collapse. But losing despite such a fine offensive performance adds a unique layer of disbelief to this latest failure.
That was 2016 vintage Falcons offense at Dallas on Sunday. The problem was that the meltdown also looked familiar.
“We are definitely a better finishing team than what we showed today,” Falcons wide receiver Julio Jones said. "We are still a very positive team. It sucks when you lose like today.
“At the end of the day, we will not let this define who we are. As you saw, there is some upside.”
Since 2002, when the NFL realigned into eight divisions, just 16 of 149 teams that started 0-2 went on to make the playoffs. If you are looking for reasons to believe the Falcons can join that list, their offensive eruption on Sunday provides some hope. The extra NFC Wild Card for this year is another.
During their run to the 2017 Super Bowl the Falcons scored 40 or more points three times without the benefit of return touchdowns. They did it again in the NFC championship game against the Packers. That was the year the Falcons evolved from an all-Julio offense with a shaky offensive line to a unit that could easily put up points in any number of ways.
That’s how the Falcons looked on Sunday. The offensive line blocked well and quarterback Matt Ryan was sharp. Ridley scored two touchdowns. New tight end Hayden Hurst and wide receiver Russell Gage scored one each. The Falcons had six plays longer than 15 yards. Jones was responsible for just one of them.
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
It was a change from the week before. Jones had nine catches for 157 yards against Seattle but the Falcons scored 12 points when it mattered while losing 38-25. Jones played with a sore hamstring against Dallas and had two catches for 24 yards. The Falcons still scored their second-most offensive points since the 2016 season.
They weren’t perfect. In the third quarter, Jones dropped a potential touchdown pass from wide receiver Gage, who’d lined up as the quarterback. Jones: “I just can’t run the way I want to run. ... (But) I can definitely make that play.”
That drop was on third down. The Falcons huddled up to go for it on fourth. But officials penalized the Falcons for too many men on the field. There was confusion on the broadcast about what happened. Dean Blandino, Fox’s rules analyst, didn’t have a good explanation.
What did game officials tell Quinn?
“I’m just going to say it was one we discussed,” Quinn said. “Hopefully that’s one that won’t happen again. It wasn’t anything that the team had fouled up.”
The Falcons ended up punting. The Cowboys started on their 17-yard line. They scored a touchdown 2:47 later. They got in position when Falcons safety Keanu Neal somehow ended up covering star wide receiver Amari Cooper, who was open to snag a 58-yard catch with one hand.
The Falcons answered with a an 11-play touchdown drive. During that possession Hurst, who’d scored on a 42-yard catch in the first half, had a 22-yard reception on third down. Jones caught a fourth-down pass from his back. Gage caught an 8-yard TD pass for a 36-24 lead.
The Falcons scored a field goal on their next drive after Ridley’s 14-yard catch got them to the red zone. That pushed the lead to 39-24 with 8:01 to play. That should have been enough points to win. The Falcons were still up 39-30 after Dak Prescott’s touchdown run with 5:02 left.
The Falcons gained one first down in their next drive. Maybe they could have done better. But the defense had to hold up its end after Dallas had scored on five of six full possessions since the first quarter. Instead, the Cowboys scored another TD in just 1:08.
The Cowboys still trailed by two points with 1:49 left. All the Falcons had to do was recover the on-side kick. They didn’t. Wide receiver CeeDee Lamb put Dallas in position to kick a field goal with a catch-and-run on second down for 24 yards. Zuerlein made it from 46 yards to finish off the Falcons.
The Falcons managed to lose despite a a great day by their offense. They scored on eight of 12 possessions and didn’t commit a turnover. It had been a while since they operated so efficiently.
The Falcons scored 40 points vs. Carolina last December, but that was relatively simple. The Falcons just kept testing Carolina’s atrocious run defense until it gave. The Panthers, who had already fired coach Ron Rivera, withered away.
This game wasn’t so straightforward for the Falcons. The Cowboys were stout against the run. The Falcons did it well enough to keep the down-and-distance manageable and make the run fakes sellable. Ryan spread his passes around to several targets.
The Falcons scored 29 points before halftime. They hadn’t scored that many in a first half since tallying 35 against the Saints in Week 17 of the 2016 season. Jones scored none of the points in Sunday’s first half and gained five of the 156 yards (though he did set up a field goal by forcing rookie cornerback Trevon Diggs to grab him and save a touchdown).
The big plays came from others, especially Ridley. He scored the game’s first TD on a toe-tapping, pylon-touching catch for 22 yards. He had a 25-yard catch that put the Falcons at midfield before he scored again from 3 yards out to push the lead to 26-7. A 24-yard catch by Ridley led to the field goal that put the Falcons up 29-10 at halftime.
The Falcons couldn’t hold that lead. They squandered a 15-point advantage in the fourth quarter.
“We should have won the game,” Ridley said. “Just really shocked and just hurt, really.”
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