Falcons not your ordinary wild-card team
LOS ANGELES — Like the speedsters, Matt Ryan switched to longer cleats while in the midst of the playoff opener to better contend with the slippery surface at the Los Angeles Coliseum.
But you would have never declared: “It’s the shoes, money!” on one critical play at crunch time.
Ryan stumbled as he executed a play-action fake, and it nearly led to disaster. Yet he kept his cool. Ryan quickly gathered himself and floated a soft, pretty pass to Julio Jones toward the short corner of the end zone for the eight-yard touchdown, which all but finished the Los Angeles Rams with less than six minutes on the clock.
After the 26-13 win set up a trip to Philadelphia — not far from his hometown of Exton, Pa. — for a divisional playoff matchup against the Eagles this weekend, Ryan chuckled about his cleats.
“I’m not sure it made any difference,” he said, mocking his athleticism.
But Ryan switched his cleats nonetheless, heeding the word from his offensive co-ordinator, Steve Sarkisian, who used to coach home games here for USC and warned players about a so-called “marine effect” that causes havoc on the turf.
It didn’t hurt, although with Connor Barwin threatening to blow up the play on the TD throw to Jones, Ryan said: “I didn’t stop probably as gracefully as I would have liked.”
But he got it done, which says a lot about why the Falcons have advanced. It was graceful enough.
While the Rams stung themselves with self-inflicted blunders — most notably the two turnovers on punt and kickoff returns that fuelled an early 13-0 lead for Atlanta — Ryan and Co. kept their poise and played like a team that had been there before.
That can be the difference with the sudden-death ramifications of the playoffs. Too many mistakes and you’re out.
The Rams — with a rookie coach in Sean McVay and just six players on the roster who had ever played in a playoff game before this wild-card matchup — have just learned a serious lesson about all of this.
The Falcons know it all too well, having steamrolled to the Super Bowl last season, only to suffer the indignity of blowing a 25-point lead against the New England Patriots that marked the biggest Super Bowl comeback ever.
Sure, that Super Bowl collapse was in a different place and time. But the trek to get there, and the triumphs, lessons, highs and lows along the way, add something to the maturity of here and now.
There’s something different about playoff football.
That’s a formula that needs to continue if the Falcons are to become the first team since the 1993 Buffalo Bills to return to the Super Bowl in the season after losing in a Super Bowl.
The fact that they are the only team in the NFC bracket that returned to the playoffs vouches for that in another sense.
The noise continues in Philadelphia, the next stop on Atlanta’s incredible challenge. If the Falcons are indeed going to get back to the Super Bowl, they must survive as a sixth seed. That means there was no break with a bye week and every game must be won on the road.
The Falcons don’t care if you believe they are up to the task or not. “Any time, anywhere,” said safety Keanu Neal. “That’s our motto.”
But it’s deeper than a bumper sticker slogan. The Falcons, poised and resilient, still have the audacity to believe.