Falcons offensive coordinator Dirk Koetter was afraid a 16-point lead wasn’t enough.
He was, of course, correct.
The veteran play-caller said their decision to keep throwing the ball (which they did not do well) in the fourth quarter of Sunday’s blown lead to the Bears stemmed from a desire to put another score on the board as opposed to just bleeding the clock and keeping it away from Bears replacement quarterback Nick Foles.
“Because we were struggling in all areas, our focus was more on we need to try to flip the field here and score another time,” Koetter said, via Jason Butt of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “Not necessarily running out the clock because if you look at the time when you had the ball, there was still too much time and they had all their timeouts. We weren’t really in our four-minute offense mode at that point.”
Asked if he thought he needed another touchdown to feel secure, Koetter replied: “Absolutely.”
That touchdown didn’t come.
After turning the Bears over on downs with 10:46 left in the game and a 26-10 lead, the Falcons went three-and-out on their next three possessions, taking a combined 2:58 off the clock while Foles led the Bears back.
It’s fine to be aggressive, and want to pursue a win (especially with the way they blew the previous week’s game). But at some point, you have to execute, and they weren’t able to.
