Hangover won’t let go
Atlanta’s potent play now foggy memory
FOXBORO — No need for a Super comeback last night by the Patriots, because the Atlanta Falcons clearly have not yet come back from last year’s Stupor Bowl LI collapse. Not even eternally optimistic Falcons coach Dan Quinn can deny that anymore.
The Patriots made it 54 unanswered points since trailing the flightless Falcons, 28-
3, late in the third quarter of last year’s Super Bowl before Atlanta finally scored on them last night. By the time they finally found the end zone with 4:09 to play in this longsince-lost game, the Pats had beaten them to the point that even usually unflappable quarterback Matt Ryan, known to one and all since his BC days as Matty Ice, had a meltdown.
Ryan was seen upbraiding wide receiver Mohamed Sanu on the sideline late in the first half after Sanu failed to take his route deep enough on a failed fourth down try with just under two minutes left in the second quarter. As Ryan reprimanded him, a clearly peevish Julio Jones stood by looking as if his opinion of Atlanta’s game plan was, to be kind, skeptical.
That failed fourth-down try gave the ball back to the Patriots 53 yards from the goal line with 1:55 left in the half. Only 94 seconds later, James White, who assaulted the Falcons defense in Super Bowl LI, returned to haunt them again as an eerie fog began to descend on the place as if Halloween was not still a week away.
White circled out of the backfield, faked linebacker Deion Jones out of his shoes and broke open in the end zone to receive a Tom Brady bullet that seemed to take what little life was left out of the Falcons as the score ballooned to 17-0 and their hearts began to sink.
Quinn had insisted all spring and summer that there would be no Super Bowl hangover for the Falcons, despite the fact it is a malady that has plagued many Super Bowl losers following their demise in football’s most significant game. The more the Falcons insisted the worst secondhalf collapse in Super Bowl history was behind them, the more it seems it has not. Last night all they were behind was the Patriots, who eventually slapped them silly, 23-7.
“We’re not playing with the edge I think we’re capable of,” Quinn conceded after his team had lost its third straight. “For us to not nail opportunities we had, I thought, speaks to our edge.”
A year ago, the Falcons certainly had an edge to their game. They had the most explosive offense in football, averaging 33.8 points per game. But last night it was as if new offensive coordinator Steve Sarkisian had been handed an exploding cigar, because everything he tried blew up in his face. Helping him light it was the fact the Falcons have two passing game coordinators, yet their passing game seemed less coordinated than a newborn foal.
With 15 minutes to play, it had become five straight quarters in which an offense with Ryan, Julio Jones (who may be the most dangerous wide receiver in football) and swift and quick running back Devonta Freeman had failed to score. This would drag on for just over 90 minutes of play, or six quarters of football. Quinn may not consider that a hangover, but whatever it is Atlanta’s growing sense of offensive ineptitude is hanging over them.
Not that things went much better for Falcons defensive coordinator Marquand Manuel. To be fair, it did take a bit of time for Brady to break down Atlanta’s defense. But after being shutout in the first quarter, the Pats scored on their next five drives. They led 17-0 at the half and immediately expanded that to 20-0 on their opening drive of the third quarter — a winding, timeconsuming 13-play, 71-yard march that ended with Stephen Gostkowski’s 21-yard field goal.
The way things were going for the Falcons, that constituted a moral victory. It was the only kind they were going to get.
If revenge was on the Falcons’ mind, it disappeared in a fog as thick and hazy as Atlanta’s troubled foggy minds. They staggered around all night in part because of their own ineptitude, and in large part because the Patriots were throwing over them, running over them and knocking them over like so many candlepins.
A Patriots defense that had allowed six straight quarterbacks to throw for over 300 yards melted Matty Ice, who finished with only 233 passing yards, two failed fourthdown tries and a third-down efficiency rating so inept (22 percent) it should have been labeled Atlanta’s third-down inefficiency rating.
Their failures were not all of their own doing, however. Much of them were a result of a far more disciplined Patriots defense that finally listened to the “Do Your Job” mantra of coach Bill Belichick, and contented itself with sticking to that approach rather than trying to do everyone else’s job to no good end.
“Just playing smarter and better, that’s all,” said cornerback Malcolm Butler, who has begun to do both himself — and certainly did last night.
Offensively, Brady was Brady, which as he proved last February is a death sentence for the Falcons. He was not the unstoppable Brady of the final quarter and a half of the Super Bowl, but rather the surgical Brady who has carved up so many defenses over the past 17 seasons — hitting them mostly short against a zone defense designed to allow that to happen. When adjustments were occasionally attempted, Brady hit them deep with Brandin Cooks or Chris Hogan just often enough to perplex Manuel’s defense.
Whatever direction the Falcons turned, it seemed, the Patriots were a step ahead, both offensively and defensively. The Pats had a better plan, better execution and better emotion. They came to play.
The Falcons? Who knows? Certainly they don’t.
“Through (the last) three games, it’s a tale of inconsistency,” Ryan said. “We’re not the team I think we’re going to be. We’ve been close — that was the case again tonight — but I know it doesn’t look like that.”
It certainly didn’t. While both the Falcons and the Patriots played in the fog, only one of them played in a fog. For Atlanta, it’s a fog that began to descend in the third quarter of Super Bowl LI and shows no signs of lifting.