The Falcons had a 16-point lead over the Saints early in the fourth quarter of Sunday’s game, but what looked like it could be a win turned into the latest entry on the list of blown leads by the Atlanta club.
If the path to the loss was a windy one, the end result is one that many people predicted coming into the game. Those people predicted a lot more losses in the weeks to come, but Falcons head coach Arthur Smith made it clear in July that he wasn’t interested in those opinions.
Smith had the same message during his postgame press conference on Sunday.
“You guys wrote our obituary back in May,” Smith said, via Kelly Price of Fox 5 Atlanta. “You’ll continue to write our obituary. Who cares? We have 16 games and if we don’t learn from this and get better — We gotta go play L.A. They got a three-day jump on us. We’ll watch the tape, we’ll look for corrections and then we have to get going on the Rams. . . . Write whatever y’all want. Same guys that ranked us 45th. You buried us in May, bury us again. We don’t care. We’ll get back to work.”
There was a lot to like on both sides of the ball for the Falcons for the first three quarters of Sunday’s game. The inability to finish mitigates those positives and they’ll have to actually win some games for the tide to turn in Atlanta.
