Missed chances doom Ryan, ATL
HOUSTON — For someone who just experienced what he did, Matt Ryan remained surprisingly lucid.
Ryan did admit, though, that doing so was difficult.
“You know, it’s hard to find words tonight,” Ryan said.
Could you blame him? In the span of roughly one quarter of football, Ryan went from potential Super Bowl LI champion and MVP to the leader of an Atlanta Falcons team on the wrong side of the largest comeback in the history of the sport’s biggest game in a stunning, 34-28 overtime meltdown to the Patriots.
In a defeat that did not make much sense, Ryan did his best to deconstruct it.
“We just had a couple of plays that got us off-schedule,” Ryan said. “With the onside kick, the short-field opportunity, I felt like we should have come away with points and didn’t. Obviously, with the longer drive (in the fourth quarter) that we were in field goal range, we got pushed back out of field goal range. That was difficult.”
It was, and the Falcons seemed perfectly on schedule in the second half, even after giving up a third-quarter touchdown pass to James White that cut the Falcons’ lead to 28-9. And even after a Stephen Gostkowski 33-yard field goal sliced the fourthquarter Falcons lead to 28-12, Atlanta’s hopes for its first Super Bowl title seemed realistic, if not still nearly certain.
However, when Dont’a Hightower burst in off the edge and forced a fumble that Alan Branch recovered at the Falcons 25-yard line with 8:24 to play, the Pats’ momentum gained steam. Tom Brady followed with a 6-yard touchdown pass to Danny Amendola and White’s conversion rush brought the Pats to within 28-20.
“To give them a short field, that’s inopportune,” Ryan said. “Hopefully, in the future when we get those opportunities we can be better.”
Even when the Falcons looked primed to put the game away on the next drive, they could not finish the Patriots off.
A brilliant, tip-toe catch on the sideline by Julio Jones for 27 yards brought the ball into field-goal range at the Pats’ 22 with 4:47 to play. But a killer, 12-yard sack by Trey Flowers on second down knocked the Falcons back, then on the next play, a holding penalty pushed them out of field goal range. They punted, giving the Pats the ball back with 3:30 to go.
The rest will go down in Super Bowl lore, as Brady orchestrated a 92-yard touchdown drive to send the game into overtime, then another in the extra session to end it.
Ryan defended offensive coordinator Mike Shanahan’s perhaps too aggressive play-calling with a 25-point second-half lead, insisting the loss rested more simply on missed opportunities.
Ever-positive Falcons coach Dan Quinn maintained that he was proud of his team, but admitted, “No doubt that was a tough one for us. That’s a hard one in the locker room. No place to put that one mentally for us.”
In a historically cruel way to lose, Ryan put it plainly: “I mean, there’s nothing you can really say.”
And that said quite enough.