The Falcons may have worn the jerseys from the 1966 team, but they sure did not look like the team circa 1966. Thanks to big plays on offense and key plays on defense, the Falcons were able to drop the Carolina Panthers to 0-2 with the 28-20 win on Sunday at the Georgia Dome.
Matt Ryan and company had a tough start at the beginning of the contest, as the first two series for the offense stalled due to bad penalties and an interception by Ryan in the first quarter, which led to a 3-0 lead for the Panthers.
“Today we stopped ourselves a lot of the times,” said tight end Tony Gonzalez, who led the team in receiving with seven receptions, 71 yards and one touchdown. “We left some points out there. We talked about it as a group after the game and it’s like, ‘look, if we stop shooting ourselves in the foot, who knows how many points we can put up?’”
The Falcons answered back late in the first quarter when Brian Williams blocked a Jason Baker punt that was recovered by Mike Peterson. That led to a Ryan 24-yard touchdown pass to Gonzalez and the Falcons took the lead. Peterson, who had another solid game with nine tackles to lead the team, has become a leader to the younger guys in a short amount of time.
“It’s nothing that I’m not familiar with,” said Peterson after the game. “I was asked to come in here and lead the younger guys as well as come in here and make some big plays. I’m just doing what the coaches asked me to do.”
Carolina answered right back as DeAngelo Williams scored on a 3-yard touchdown run to take the lead yet again. However, the Falcons were able to put the pedal to the metal in the second quarter as Ryan threw his next two touchdown passes to give the Falcons the 21-13 lead at halftime.
The third quarter was a quiet one for both teams, but Peterson made one of the day’s biggest plays when he forced a Williams fumble, which led to a Michael Turner 1-yard touchdown run to cushion the lead.
The Panthers scored again late in the fourth but it was too little too late. The Falcons picked up the win in their first divisional game of the year.
Along with the three touchdowns that he threw, Ryan ended the afternoon with 220 yards, and enjoyed a streak where he completed 13 consecutive passes. He also did not get sacked or hit all game long. But he knows that there is more work to be done.
“I think I have a long way to go,” Ryan said. “Something that I learned when I was young was that the tape is never is good as you think and it’s never as bad. So even though you might think you completed a lot of passes, there’s still a lot of room for improvement.”
The Falcons picked up another quality win on the young season by beating a division rival. But head coach Mike Smith will make sure that the mistakes they made in this game won’t be made again on Sunday against the New England Patriots, who are 1-1 for the year.
“We had some miscues, we had some good plays,” Smith said. “I can assure you this, when we get back to Flowery Branch tomorrow we’ll be talking more about the miscues than the big plays because we’ve got a lot of things that we can improve on.”
Jones can be reached at bjones@scoreatl.com.
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