National Football League

Four Downs: Falcons bring losing ways home to Atlanta

Published Oct. 13, 2014 12:43 a.m. ET

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ATLANTA -- For the third week in a row, the Atlanta Falcons were on the losing end of a winnable football game. The loss to the Bears at home on Sunday seemed worse than the previous two, however.

Start with the fact that Chicago beat Atlanta in the Georgia Dome, a place where wins typically come easy. The Falcons are 62-39 at home since 2008 ... well, 62-40 after Chicago's 27-13 victory.

Now consider that Atlanta failed to score in the fourth quarter, and only managed 13 points against a Chicago defense than was ranked 23rd in the league by allowing 26.2 points per game before Week 6.

Atlanta's defense is bad. Prior to Sunday it was ranked 23rd against the pass and 28th versus the run. If the Falcons can't score points on offense to bail out a subpar defense, this team won't win many games. That's the scenario that unfolded against Chicago.

Here are four observations from Atlanta's loss to Chicago:

During his postgame press conference, head coach Mike Smith laid out just how badly his team had been beaten in the yardage game.

"We were outgained in this football game by almost 200 yards, not nearly good enough," said Smith.

The Bears posted 478 total yards on Sunday, 368 through the air and 110 on the ground. The Falcons were only able to muster 287, and 245 of those were passing yards.

Smith's math was pretty spot on; Chicago was 191 yards better than Atlanta. It's been a very infrequent occurrence when the Falcons have been beaten that badly on offense.

In the 102 games Smith has coached the Falcons, his offense has been outgained by an opponent by 175 yards or more eight times, including Sunday versus the Bears.

The worst was a Week 10 game last season against the Seahawks in the Georgia Dome. Seattle outgained Atlanta by 264 yards, and won by 23. Washington outgained Atlanta last season by 233 yards in Week 15, but the Falcons won that game.

Surprisingly, the Falcons are 3-5 when they're outgained by 175 yards or more. And to add further shock, of the eight times it's happened, only three have been road games.

If you haven't heard, Ryan's nickname is "Matty Ice."

He earned that in part with his play late in games, particularly the fourth quarter and overtime. Since he entered the league in 2008, he's led the Falcons to 24 come-from-behind victories in the fourth quarter or beyond. No quarterback since 1966, in the first five years of his career, has posted more game-winning drives in the fourth quarter or overtime than Ryan, who's done it 22 times.

The Falcons were down 19-13 entering the fourth quarter. But the Bears weren't going to become notch No. 25 on Ryan's bedpost.

Not only did the Falcons not come back to win, they did not score in the fourth quarter at all. And Ryan had trouble moving the football through the air.

Ryan posted a fourth-quarter passer rating of 18.3 against the Bears, and completed just 4 of 10 passes for 54 yards. He was victim to a few dropped passes, and was also under duress through much of the final frame. Ryan was sacked three times in the fourth quarter alone.

Atlanta's fourth-quarter woes didn't begin this week. The Falcons have been outscored 63-17 in the fourth quarter this season. It's the only quarter in which this team hasn't scored more points than an opponent.

Smith doesn't care who dropped passes on Sunday, he just wants the issue fixed.

"It doesn't concern me that it's a veteran player, or a young player, we've got to complete balls," said Smith. "We got to make the play when the plays are presented to us. We had some opportunities today, and we did not get that done."

He was talking about the seven passes the Falcons let slip through their fingers. And that's putting it nicely. These were full-blown drops.

On the playground it's called having frying pans attached to the ends of your arms. Or kids who drop passes are nicknamed "camel hands." The insults may be funny, but when one of those kids makes it to the NFL, soft hands are expected.

Watching the Falcons against the Bears, it didn't seem like there was much of a weeding out process from the playground to the Georgia Dome.

Tight end Levine Toilolo did not have soft hands, as he dropped three passes. Two of those drops occurred when Toilolo was barely being defended. The big target just seemed to get tangled up with his own body.

He said he let his team down. Even though Toilolo made three catches for 34 yards, he wasn't too far off his own assessment.

"I just think it's technique that I need to improve," said the second-year tight end. "For example, securing the catch before trying to run is something I need to hone. The same catches I dropped today are the same ones I make all the time. I just need to concentrate on the details and learn from my mistakes."

Roddy White and Julio Jones each had two dropped passes on Sunday as well. The seven drops more than doubled Atlanta's output for the season. The Falcons had four drops as a team entering Week 6.

Eleven is a much nastier number.

It's possible that if you're reading this and under the age of 30, you've never touched a vinyl record. But you sure know what the expression "sounds like a broken record" means.

The Falcons' defense is putrid. Sunday's performance went a long way toward proving that fact. But you already knew that.

Atlanta gave up 478 total yards to the Bears. That's not quite as bad as the 558 they allowed Minnesota in Week 4, but it's worse than the first two weeks of the season where New Orleans and Cincinnati pasted 472 total yards each on Atlanta's defense.

Smith pointed toward a benign pass rush as a huge issue. That's no secret.

After that, he offered little explanation to what was wrong with this Atlanta defense that now has allowed teams an average of 419 total yards per game. And he didn't offer any solutions either.

"I don't think anything is off the table in terms of what we've got to get done (to fix the defense)," said Smith. "These are the guys that we have on our football team. We have to coach them better. They have to play better."

What that screams is that any change for the better than comes in the next 10 games, is going to have to come from someone on this roster improving. That doesn't seem likely.

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