The Falcons lost this one. They went from beating the defending Super Bowl champions on the road to falling to an 0-3 team at home. They were a mediocre 2-2 for the season.
Even AtlantaFalcons.com posted a caption on the website that read, “Despite the loss….”
Then, all of a sudden, they hadn’t lost. They didn’t fall to a winless team. They weren’t 2-2.
When Matt Ryan was picked off by Nate Clements with just over one minute remaining, all the 49ers’ cornerback had to do was take a knee. Sure, Atlanta still had three timeouts left, but San Francisco–already with a 14-13 lead–would have had the ball in Falcons’ territory. Yep, it would have been over all right.
Instead, Clements took the interception and raced down the sideline toward the endzone. Perhaps unaware that he had already clinched the game and certainly unsuspecting of anyone catching him from behind, Clements got all the way to the 10-yard line. But that’s where Falcons’ receiver Roddy White caught up and used his left hand to punch the ball out of Clement’s left arm. Offensive lineman Harvey Dahl recovered the fumble at the seven with 1:22 remaining in the game.
Seventy-five seconds later, Matt Bryant lined up for a 43-yard field goal and he promptly booted it through the uprights for his second game-winning kick in as many weeks. And for the second time in as many weeks, the Falcons emerged victorious in a game that appeared to be over in the opponents’ favor just minutes earlier.
“I just punched as hard as I can,” White explained in an interview with the team’s website. “When I punched it I (saw) the ball come up and I just tackled him to make sure wouldn’t get it again. After that I was searching for the ball and I turned around and Harvey had it. I was excited.”
Excited? He should be positively giddy! This is only Week 4, and 2-2 would have left the Falcons just one game behind New Orleans in the NFC South, but it would have been devastating. All the momentum from the upset win in the Superdome would have vanished amidst an inexplicable home loss to an NFL cellar-dweller.
But enough with could have beens, should have beens, and would have beens. The talk is not about Atlanta’s miscues, of which there were many. The talk, thankfully, is about White’s heroics.
“It was an unbelievable effort on Roddy’s part,” Ryan noted during his post-game press conference. “Roddy came out of nowhere and really made the play of the game. Harvey Dahl fell on it, which is an incredible effort by him being 60 yards behind the play as an offensive lineman. It really was a breath of new life when we got the football back.”
For head coach Mike Smith, it was also a defining Atlanta Falcons play. “To throw that interception and have them running in, going to score; to have Roddy White run down the field and strip that ball out was a huge play,” Smith said in his press conference. “It was an effort play. Then to have offensive linemen running 70 yards basically from where the ball was snapped; that says a lot about what this team is all about.”
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