Falcons, Matt Ryan luck out against Siemian-led Saints

Coming into a matchup against the hated New Orleans Saints, the Atlanta Falcons didn’t look great against the Panthers. In fact, let’s not mince words: they looked terrible. Meanwhile, the hated Saints were riding high, beating Tom Brady’s Bucs for the third time in the regular season and had a chance to take first place in the division with a win.

Well, thanks to Cordarrelle Patterson and Younghoe Koo, the Falcons managed to out-Falcon the Falconing.

Somehow, someway, thanks to the two men listed above, Atlanta managed to walk into the now-Caesar’s Superdome (wonder what happened to the Benz?), cough up an 18-point fourth-quarter lead for the first time since that game (keep in mind, this is just on lead difference, not all the other blown leads) before Patterson reeled off a 64-yard catch-and-run to set up Koo’s third game-winning field goal of this season.

The Atlanta Falcons now move to 4-4 on the season, improve to third in the division (.500 to Carolina’s .444) and now improve to 4-2 in games decided by seven points or less (which also continues a streak dating to Week 3 against the Giants). Their next challenge is another road game in Central Time, going to Dallas to face the Cowboys (who lost to the Broncos!) and former head coach Dan Quinn. We don’t need to rehash what happened last year; Twitter will be all over that in the lead-up to this game.

The Atlanta Falcons, and namely Arthur Smith, almost cost Matt Ryan’s performance.

Let’s be real here: everything that happened in the fourth quarter continues to reign supreme: NO LEAD IS SAFE when the Falcons are in front. And it should’ve happened in this game, despite all the positives that happened before.

First, there was the 39-yard catch-and-run by Kyle Pitts, who dropped a pass on the opening drive. Or Patterson, who responded to Pitts’ aforementioned drop by catching a 34-yard pass on the same drive (which did stall).

Or how about Russell Gage, making his appearance known after being non-existent against Carolina? Or the receiver of the hour, Mr. Olamide Zaccheaus, who caught all three of his targets for 58 yards, none more impressive than the 49-yarder on the Falcons’ first drive of the second half.

However, this contest should’ve been a loss, and while it could be placed on the defense playing in soft coverage again (who was guarding Kamara on that play?!), head coach Arthur Smith is not without criticism in his own right.

We’ll first dissect the defense. For three quarters against inferior quarterback play (Siemian and Hill are no Brees and Winston, no question), the Falcons defense was stifling in the passing game while being gashed in the rushing attack. To reference this, the Falcons and Saints both ran the ball 25 times, Atlanta for 35 and the Saints for 109. That’s a 3.0 difference in yards per attempt. Furthermore, in the passing game, while the defense was aided by multiple drops and penalties, for the most part, they held their own until changing it up leading by 18 and allowing multiple underneath throws. Also, it seems as though AJ Terrell gave up his first red-zone completion/touchdown, but that one can be debated based on one factor: was Terrell’s man Marques Callaway, who caught the pass, or Alvin Kamara, the running back out in the flat?

And now, we reach the man in charge of the whole operation: head coach Arthur Smith, who once again got massively conservative with his play-calling late in the game. While some plays were busted, yes, running with Franks against the second-best run defense in the league isn’t smart, especially when the next two plays resulted in sacks. Furthermore, do we not remember how the game went against the Jets? Just when it looked like the team would play like they did against Washington the week prior, Smith kept his foot on the gas, and it paid off against the inferior competition.

Playing the way he did late against the Saints isn’t just evidence of a rookie in charge making questionable decisions (why hand it off instead of sneak on fourth and inches?!), it’s playing to get beat. And against a perennial playoff contender in the Saints (in the Sean Payton era), the Falcons should have walked out of the Superdome losers.

Matt Ryan is not absolved of blame as he got lucky in this contest.

On paper, Matt Ryan’s stat line was evidence of yet another great game in his 14-year Falcons career. He completed 77 percent of his passes, threw for 343 yards, two touchdowns (happy LLAMA DAY), and even ran for a score on a nice jumbo package.

The touchdown throws were impressive from Ryan, as the first one (on a nice low throw) found Zaccheaus right before halftime for a 10-0 lead.

However, there were four instances where Ryan deserves to be criticized for his play, one early, one on the end of half drive, and two late.

The early indication of his performance which must warrant criticism was arguably one of his worst decisions of the day. Facing a third and four from the Saints 14, Ryan dropped back and targeted tight end, Hayden Hurst. This throw easily could’ve, and if we’re being real, should’ve gone the other way, but CJ Gardner-Johnson (despite getting two hands on the ball) dropped it. A bad play by Ryan that was luckily kept for the Falcons and Koo.

The second play, ironically enough, is a 50-50 play for Ryan, because it was the touchdown pass to Zaccheaus. On that play, he did throw it low where only his receiver could catch it, but it nearly was batted away by a diving Kwon Alexander. Advantage: good guys.

As for the third and fourth criticisms of play, let’s look no further than the drive right before the game-winner. After a negative play by Feleipe Franks, Ryan took two horrific sacks against a Saints defense that had yet to generate any pressure to that point. The first one was by, surprise surprise, defensive end Cameron Jordan, who beat Jake Matthews for his 22nd career sack of Ryan. The second sack is more on Ryan because he tried to run it up and Marcus Davenport got to him. Technically speaking, the play went for no gain, but Davenport was credited with a sack.