Falcons vs. Cardinals recap: The great erasing

Many of us had high hopes for this season. The Atlanta Falcons, from their owner down to the front office down to their coaching staff down to their players, certainly nurtured and shared those high hopes. Tens of millions of dollars of free agent investments, the maturation of players on the roster, and a weak schedule and division were supposed to give the Falcons a legitimate shot at winning the NFC South. It was not hard to see the team getting a lift after they went 7-10 last year without all those pieces on defense, with a rushing attack that was great even without Bijan Robinson, and a passing attack expected to mature with new additions and a third year of work from the coaching staff. Instead, the Falcons are here again. They’re 4-6 after 10 games for the third straight season. They’re third in the NFC South after sitting atop it just a couple of weeks ago. They dropped their third straight game, all of them against quarterbacks making their season debuts, and they keep losing key players along the way. Those once high hopes have curdled, and they have been replaced by a familiar dread that arises when our favorite football team is squandering an opportunity, as they so often do. The Atlanta Falcons are meticulously erasing their expectations and the fanbases’s big summer dreams every single week, and the measured but real praise for this team earlier in the season has aged like milk on the sun. Against the Cardinals, the Falcons landed their biggest blow yet against those good feelings. A quality first half from the ground game was complemented by a couple of sparks from Taylor Heinicke, but he was later injured and threw for a net of 31 yards on 15 attempts. Desmond Ridder replaced him and punched in a touchdown of his own, but he tripped on a fourth down keeper and threw it to Drake London just shy of the end zone on a two point conversion try that might’ve meant overtime for the Falcons and Cardinals. Despite a lack of turnovers, the Falcons were a mistake-riddled team, blowing opportunities in coverage, to wrap up Kyler Murray and James Conner, to make a critical block to enable a big play. Aside from the sub-100 passing yards against a weak secondary, none of these mistakes were new; it’s just that the cost associated with them continue to rise and the patience for the team making them continues to fall. They were also more costly in a week where the lowly 1-8 Cardinals got back their most talented back and their very dangerous starting quarterback, which complicated the matchup for an Atlanta team that seemed unprepared for it. This great erasing we’re enduring will likely mean the end of multiple short-lived eras in Atlanta, should the Falcons not pull out of their nosedive. Short of delivering one of the most inspiring career turnarounds in recent memory in the final seven games, Desmond Ridder is unlikely to stick as Atlanta’s quarterback. A hopeful Calais Campbell, who wanted to board a playoff-bound train, will have to be coaxed back by a team that is wasting one of the final years of his career, as will other big-name free agents and impending Falcons free agents who may not want to be on the 2024 version of this ride. And Arthur Smith, a coach who probably just needed a competent, playoff-adjacent season to stick, finds himself hurtling toward a third straight 7-10 season (or worse) with an owner who isn’t getting any younger and was just burnt a few years back when he kept his head coach one season too long. There’s time to pick that pencil back up and put something meaningful down, as Smith has noted, if only because the NFC South is such a tire-fire-of-concerning-colors-and-intensity that a post-bye run could once again catapult the Falcons to the top of the division. If they manage that, shoving aside the big questions and big problems that have plagued this team all year, fans will be happy to embrace the playoff run, albeit justifiably wary the wheels will come off again. If the team can’t find some answers out of the bye—and right now, no one in their right mind is going to be inclined to bet that they will—this team will likely be hitting the reset button on their coaching staff and the most important position on the roster. If the third year in a three year plan has led us to this, it will be another disappointment in an increasingly long string of them for the Atlanta Falcons, a team that excels at little else besides taking even modest hopes and dashing them to pieces. On to the full recap. The Good The touchdown to Scotty Miller in the second quarter was an example of everything Taylor Heinicke has done well since entering the lineup. Rather than locking on to a target, he took a beat with his protection to look elsewhere, which got him a wide open Miller for an easy score. Paired with a nice escape and scramble on the previous play, Heinicke capped off a great drive that showcased his strengths. It’s a shame that besides the Miller touchdown and a couple of nice scrambles, there wasn’t much going for Heinicke Sunday. Desmond Ridder’s red zone fumbles against the Buccaneers overshadowed something: That man has some quality red zone scrambling in him. In the fourth quarter on a do-or-die drive, the Falcons dialed another one up with Ridder faking a handoff and rolling out, and he scored easily on the run to put Atlanta up by a point. That was Ridder’s fourth rushing touchdown of the year, and if he sticks in the starting job the rest of the way, he may be the first Falcons quarterback to lead the team in rushing touchdowns since Michael Vick. You’ll note I emphasized the rushing highlights for both quarterbacks, and for good reason. I think the lack of touches narrative for Bijan Robinson was a bit overblown, but I would have agreed that he hadn’t touched the ball nearly enough in the red zone, and that he was being over-utilized as a receiver instead of a runner. In this one, the Falcons made a point of getting him the ball early and often and inside the 20, and he responded with some big runs and a beautiful touchdown gallop where he got to the outside and jogged in untouched. Again and again, he turned one nice block into a massive gain and turned a little daylight into extra yardage, showcasing the burst and ability en route to nearly 100 yards on the ground, a score, and an 11 yard catch. The Falcons need to focus on getting him the ball on the ground more, both to salvage this offense and to give Robinson a chance to really get into a groove. Drake London was the team’s sole really good receiving option on a day where the Falcons somehow had under 100 yards passing. While his numbers don’t stand out, he drew a controversial pass interference call down the sideline (and almost made a nice catch), made one of the plays of the day on his one-handed bobble grab on the sideline, and made three grabs for 36 yards in total, plus a two point conversion attempt that he tried to make happen through sheer force of will. It was good to see him out there and he and Pitts leading the team in targets; it just wasn’t enough through the air on Sunday. Fun sequence against the diminutive Kyler Murray on Arizona’s second drive. Backed up thanks to penalties, the Cardinals were trying to throw, but Timothy Horne deflected one pass into the air and Kentavius Street got a finger on a second to send it tumbling well short of Murray’s target and end the drive. It was a highlight for a line that predictably struggled to get any sort of pressure on Murray without star players. Nate Landman’s interception was one of the plays of the game. He kept his eyes locked on Murray, and when Murray threw it behind the tight end and right at Landman, the second-year linebacker was waiting for it and snared it. That plus a 28 yard return to set the Falcons…

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