Photo by Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images
Atlanta can’t keep doing this to themselves.
The door was open for the Falcons, all they had to do was walk through it. Instead the team slipped on the welcome mat, flailed around comically, and collapsed to the ground with their pants around their ankles. Why did their pants fall down? I don’t know — it’s just funnier this way.
On paper the season isn’t over for Atlanta, but it sure feels like it. The Falcons managed to trot out an offense that was sloppier than the disgusting Charlotte weather, and find a way to make the Panthers look like a competent NFL team for one afternoon. Okay, that’s a bit of hyperbole — the game ended 9-7 on a Sunday where both teams looked like utter garbage, but that’s also the point here. Once again poor coaching, decision making, and strategy led to a woeful outcome. That’s a mixture of inability and incompetence caused by two men: Desmond Ridder and Arthur Smith.
We’re almost two full seasons into the Ridder “era,” which is looking more like a short, perfunctory chapter in a horrible novel. A woefully average quarterback at the best of times, his performance is considerably worse when you factor in two key elements.
The Falcons have incredible skill position players he doesn’t know how to use
Ridder routinely finds ways to screw up at the worst possible time
These two traits were on full display against the Panthers, with Drake London, Kyle Pitts and Bijan Robinson being non-factors in the passing game. They combined for six receptions and 64 yards. At no point did they feel like cogent, working parts of the offense — and while some of that can be attributed to the rain, at the end of the day the Panthers managed the weather better with the worst offense in the NFL.
We’ll circle back to this offensive issue in Atlanta, but we also have to take about the second bullet point of Ridder sadness — in particular this throw which allowed the Panthers to win the game.
This is one of the most nonsensical interceptions I have ever seen in an NFL game. There have been plenty of garbage throws in NFL history, but this had the special distinction of actually being a decent play until the ball left Ridder’s hand.
It’s a play so bad it’s actually difficult to really break down. Ridder evades the pressure, rolls out in the red zone. Then, with Drake London wide open with nobody around him — Ridder decides to throw into a triple-covered Kyle Pitts, who is a few yards to the left of London, so it’s not like he didn’t see the read. Then Ridder’s throw is off-target, and directly into the arms of safety Xavier Woods.
If you subjected yourself to that garbage game on Sunday then you know what happened from here. Bryce Young led the best drive of his young career to kneel it inside the Falcons’ 10 yard line, and set up a chip shot field goal to win the game.
After the dust settled it the discussion was pretty telling. As the Atlanta Journal-Constitution so aptly put it “Falcons lose because Arthur Smith trusted Desmond Ridder.” That’s a big word “trust,” and it’s the heart of everything wrong with the Arthur Smith era. This is a coach who routinely places trust in the wrong people, at the wrong time, then is mystified when things don’t go right.
This happened earlier in the season with Bijan Robinson in the passing game. When Robinson didn’t immediately produce, Smith essentially ignored him as a weapon in the offense. To be fair, Robinson has had some issues with drops this season — but not feeding a player like that hurts confidence and consistency. Not to mention the fact that Ridder has such poor accuracy and game feel that he rarely puts receivers in a position to gain yards after the catch.
In fact, Ridder’s 4.4 YAC average is one of the worst in the NFL this season, behind Mac Jones (5.4) and Zach Wilson (5.1). When you have a backfield receiving threat like Bijan Robinson, a tight end like Kyle Pitts, and a joker like Cordarelle Patterson — and you can’t generate YAC, that’s both a quarterback problem and a coaching problem.
Central to this issue is that somehow, some way, Smith still believes in Ridder to be the guy. Or, at the very least, he believes in him enough to try and have him throw on critical downs in a close wet game rather than use his top running back.
The absolute worst trait an NFL coach can have is one who coaches scared, and Arthur Smith too often has worked this season as if he’s petrified. The man consistently coaches not to lose, rather than coach to win — and he inconsistently kills a player’s touches at a whim, with very little feeling for the game.
It’s all moot at this point. Entering the Panthers game reports indicated that Smith’s job would be safe unless the Falcons suffered a “late season collapse.” It’s unclear if that will happen, even in light of this botch in Carolina. Atlanta has games coming up against the Colts, Bears, and Saints. If this team manages to win one or two of those games it’s likely Smith makes it to 2024.
That’s a problem.
Moving ahead in this direction is a mammoth mistake. The Falcons need to pull a new quarterback out of their hat, and move forward with a fresh offensive vision. However, this organization consistently holds onto poor head coaches for too long and settles for mediocrity. It’s a sad state of affairs, but it is what it is.
Winner: The Buffalo Bills
Having team crisis might have been the best thing to happen to this team. The Bills are now 2-0 since Sean McDermott had to defend his bizarre motivational comments about Al Qaeda, and whatever that weirdness spawned — it also caused this team to pull it together.
Back-to-back wins against the Chiefs and Cowboys is a statement. Sure, the Bills are really inconsistent and it’s impossible to know what they’re going to do from week-to-week, but nobody in the AFC is capable of the highs the Bills are.
When everything is clicking this team looks damn-near unstoppable. It’s simply that too often in 2023 they’ve had these nonsensical games where they come out of the tunnel looking like a shadow of their former selves.
Against the Cowboys the “good” Bills turned up, and Dallas had no answer. Running two high safeties isn’t uncommon for Buffalo, but it befuddled the Cowboys’ offense into oblivion. More importantly, James Cook is coming on at the right time. He ran Dallas into the ground, and if the running game is clicking now … well, watch out AFC.
If this team can make it into the playoffs they’re going to cause damage.
Loser: The Oilers, I mean Titans
Everyone knows the history of this team in Houston, but wearing the oil derrick throwbacks against the Texans is just bad form — and the Titans got punished for it.
You know what? Good. It was a stupid, pointless thing to do in the first place that was meant to elicit a reaction and it got one. Y’all lost in overtime to Case Keenum and he bounced y’all’s ass out of the playoffs.
The Ravens don’t wear Browns throwbacks. It might be acceptable against any other team, but not against Houston.
Winner: Baker Mayfield, history maker
Need more proof this season is drunk?
What a time to be alive.
Loser: Justin Fields
That has to be it, right? Like, we are officially in the end times of Fields’ reign as Bears starting quarterback.
It’s still very fair to say his struggles are a product of terrible coaching, but Fields really hasn’t done himself any favors. This season he’s consistently been good on the opening drive script, then everything has fallen apart. On Sunday he completed less than 50 percent of his passes, threw two interceptions, and got out-played by old man Joe Flacco.
Granted, the Browns defense is good — but the excuses are wearing thin and it’s past time for both Fields and the Bears to go in a different direction.
Winner: D.J. Chark with the catch of the week
It’s not often we can say anyone on the Panthers did anything “of the week,” so we gotta celebrate these moments when they pop up. This toe-tapping catch was one of the most technical, beautiful catches of the week (and season).
