Cincinnati had Atlanta on the ropes during a Week 7 shootout at the Georgia Dome, but it was the Falcons who delivered the knockout blow.
Leading 24-3 at halftime, the Falcons appeared to be on the way an easy blowout victory, similar to the 41-7 shellacking they put on Arizona at home in Week 2. Instead, the Bengals erupted for 22 unanswered points in the third quarter to surge ahead 25-24.
And it all happened in a flash; in eight minutes and 18 seconds to be exact. Kicker Mike Nugent kicked a seemingly harmless field to pull the Bengals within 24-6 with 9:34 remaining in the third, but it opened the floodgates. Atlanta punted moments later and Cincinnati promptly drove right down the field as Carson Palmer completed four passes of at least 16 yards, including 19-yard touchdown to Terrell Owens.
Following a Falcons three-and-out, Palmer found Jordan Shipley for a 64-yard score. On the very next play from scrimmage, Adam Jones stripped Roddy White and raced 59 yards for yet another touchdown. Just like that, the Bengals went from being humiliated to winning the football game.
Thanks to a convincing response from the Falcons, the lead did not last long. Atlanta marched 74 yards in eight plays over 3:14 of game time and White hauled in his second touchdown pass of the game, an 11-yarder from Matt Ryan. After quickly forcing a Cincinnati punt, Atlanta plowed through the Bengals defense for 48 yards in 11 plays while chewing 5:04 off the clock. A Michael Turner touchdown run with 4:33 left made it 39-24 and put the game away just as fast as Cincinnati had gotten back into it.
“They never put their heads down,” head coach Mike Smith said of his players during his post-game press conference. “They showed a lot of resiliency in terms of the adversity that took place there in the third quarter. It’s a lesson for us as a team to find out how we can overcome those situations because believe me, when you’re up 21 to three at halftime and then you go down 25-24 when you start the fourth quarter, it says a lot about our guys.”
Smith had this to say about White, who also added a leaping catch for a two-point conversion following his second touchdown: “I think it talks about his resiliency and his ability to overcome an adverse situation. It was a very good play by their defensive back to strip the ball. He was able to put that one behind him. When you’re a receiver or a quarterback or a player that’s out front all the time, you’ve got to be able to put those good plays and bad plays behind you and move on to the next one. Roddy has been able to do that.”
The whole team was able to do that on Sunday in the wake of a the nightmarish third quarter. Perhaps a slew of close games this season contributed to the Falcons’ ability to handle a devastating momentum shift. Two of their previous six games went to overtime, one (against San Francisco) ended with a last-second field goal, and a 20-10 win at Cleveland was far more tense than the final score indicated.
“I think it was just business as usual,” Brian Finneran said of Atlanta’s mentality following Cincinnati’s 22-point onslaught. “This is a team that understands that regardless of the score or what kind of game it is, we have a chance to pull it out . We felt good about it still.”
“They won the third quarter,” Smith concluded. “We won the other three.”
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