Where Do The Atlanta Falcons Go From Here?

After having a day or so of emotional recovery that resulted from the Falcons humiliating defeat at the hands of the New Orleans Saints 48 -16, here are my thoughts on where the Falcons are going this season.

The defeat has almost resigned the Falcons to the 6th seed in the NFC and a repeat trip to the Louisiana Superdome in the wild card round of the playoffs. The 5th seed now looks set to be occupied by the Detroit Lions, who face the Green Bay Packers in week 17, the task will be made substantially easier with the news that the Packers will be resting a large majority of their starters.

With the 6th seed, the Falcons would likely play the Saints again, who proved the other night they have the forumla to beat us. One hope we can cling too is it is very difficult to beat a team 3 times in one season, and if our defense shows up we have a chance.

Despite the beatdown our offense played pretty well, despite being pushed into a corner by being behind most of the game. Matt Ryan and Julio Jones were very impressive and continue to look very strong. We also were running the ball well at times early on until that had to be abondened due to time constraints.

So how do we beat the Saints if we face them again in a few weeks?

• Get off the field on third down! – Up until the end of the 3rd quarter, the Falcons did not stop a 3rd down conversion of the Saints offense.  If Brees can continue drives with ease it doesn’t matter what we do in other phases.
• Do what we did early on offense throughout – I was very impressed by our offense in the 1st half, Ryan looked in total control and deadly accurate. Our offense is good enough to win the superbowl we just need our defense to match the offense’s level.
• Play a complete game – What is so frustrating is that in bits and parts each phase of our team has shown superbowl winning potential. What we need to do more than anything now is for everyone to play like they are capable of doing, something that has not happened all year.

While the outlook may look bleak at the moment, if we can beat Tampa convincingly on Sunday and start to rebuild our damaged confidence, we have a shot. What we must remember is that our team is good enough talent wise, we just need to play motivated and play up to our talent level and we CAN go all the way!

Go Falcons!