As Mike Peterson said in his post-game interview, “There’s no reason to start printing T-shirts and organizing a parade.”
But there are plenty of reasons to say that Atlanta’s 27-24 overtime win at New Orleans on Sunday afternoon was nothing short of monumental.
First, recent history both individually and head-to-head had not been kind to the Falcons. They went 11-5 and made the playoffs in 2008 under first-year head coach Mike Smith only to miss the postseason last year due to a 9-7 record that really did not come close to meeting expectations. Meanwhile, the Saints ran away with the NFC South at 13-3 and went on to win the Super Bowl. They swept Atlanta in the process, making it three sweeps in four seasons while improving their record to 7-1 in the last eight against Atlanta.
Second, New Orleans already had a one-game lead over Atlanta heading into Sunday’s clash. A victory would have put the Saints alone atop the division, one game ahead of Tampa Bay and two games clear of the Falcons. That’s not exactly an insurmountable deficit, but it would have been cause for concern, especially considering that many experts raved after last season’s Super Bowl that New Orleans had the ingredients of a dynasty.
Third and foremost, the way the Falcons did it was something to behold. They overcame all kinds of momentum shifts, including right from the start. Despite receiving the opening kickoff, Atlanta found itself trailing 7-0 barely more than three minutes into the game due to a long punt return by Lance Moore that set up a touchdown pass from Drew Brees to Jeremy Shockey.
The Falcons bounced back from that like nothing happened, and they bounced back when Moore torched them for an 80-yard touchdown reception later in the first quarter. They did the same when a fumbled punt led to Moore’s second touchdown catch and a 21-17 New Orleans advantage near the end of the third. Finally (thanks in no small part to a Garrett Hartley botched 29-yard field goal), they recovered from going three-and-out on the opening drive of overtime.
Just how impressive were the Falcons at bouncing back in this game? Interestingly, the Saints did not have back-to-back scores all day long. Whenever New Orleans scored a touchdown or kicked a field goal, Atlanta was next to put points on the board.
“I told the guys that you’ve got to fight through adversity to win games in this league,” Smith said in his post-game press conference. “I can’t tell you how proud I am of the men in our locker room and the members of our football team. We fought our tails off today. That was a hard-fought game. It went well beyond 60 minutes.”
“There was a lot of back and forth,” quarterback Matt Ryan said in his post-game interview with AtlantaFalcons.com “We were up. We were down. We battled, and that’s the biggest thing. I think everybody battled.”
The naysayers–and surely the majority of Saints fans–will maintain that New Orleans lost the game because Hartley missed what would have been a game-winning field goal in overtime from a mere 29 yards out. But the truth, of course, is that the Falcons had chances to win this one long before Hartley’s gaffe.
Prior to the Saints’ third touchdown of the game late in the third quarter, Atlanta was all set to have the lead and the ball. Instead, New Orleans recovered its own punt that had bounced off the back leg of unsuspecting Falcon Thomas DeCoud. Even after that, the visitors had a chance to put the game away in regulation when they led 24-21 and were eating up the clock. But that drive stalled at the New Orleans’ 37-yard line with 3:32 remaining in regulation and Brees promptly engineered a game-tying drive.
Based on what transpired, at least prior to Hartley’s meltdown, even Who Dat Nation would have a hard time arguing that the Falcons did not deserve to win this one. And the stats support it. New Orleans turned the ball over three times; Atlanta gave it up just once (none aside from the punt). The Saints mustered only 42 yards of rushing offense; the Falcons rolled to 202 yards on the ground. Perhaps most telling, Atlanta used its physicality and stellar ball-control to dominate the time of possession 45:50 to 27:15.
“It’s huge,” tight end Tony Gonzalez noted afterward. “We’re kind of lucky to have them in our division. We get to go against them twice to see where we stack up. How good can we be?”
Thanks to Sunday’s win, the Falcons now know the answer to that question.
Loading ...
