Our typical recap will hit all the notes, as you’d expect, but after watching this game with spotty Internet and stewing quietly to myself about all the many mistakes Atlanta made, I was moved to write about the specific issues that cost Atlanta in a close game. It’s a mix of questionable-to-weird coaching decisions and errors of execution, all of them familiar.
- Calvin Ridley continues to have legitimate problems with concentration that result in costly drops. It was an issue that plagued him in college, and while the Alabama product is very obviously a gifted receiver who has been a net asset to the offense, his awful drop in this game killed the Falcons because it led to an interception and subsequent Dallas score that wound up proving to be decisive.