Falcons' Continued Failures Reflect on Head Coach and General Manager

Sunday's 22-21 loss to the Detroit Lions served as a microcosm of the Mike Smith-Thomas Dimitroff era for the Atlanta Falcons. 

Poor game management, a lack of mental toughness and a deteriorating roster have plagued the organization for years. 

As the Falcons entered this season, last year was considered a fluke. Atlanta was supposedly too talented to be a 4-12 team, right? After all, Smith posted a 56-24 record during his first five seasons. And the Falcons made it to the NFC Championship Game in 2012 only to lose 28-24 to the San Francisco 49ers.

Since that point it's been all downhill for the organization, as ESPN's Adam Schefter pointed out:  

In the immortal words of Denny Green, "They were who we thought they were."

The Falcons are a 2-6 team without much hope for the rest of the season despite the poor play of an entire division. And the blame falls on the head coach and general manager. 

As seen on HBO's Hard Knocks (h/t B/R's Matt Fitzgerald), throughout the offseason, Smith demanded the team play with an increased level of physicality. The coach was averse to saying Atlanta wasn't tough enough. However, the question was never about physical toughness. The Falcons are a weak team mentally. 

You could see it during the previously mentioned NFC Championship Game, and it was on display again Sunday. 

Atlanta has had talent at the skill positions to build leads even against some of the NFL's best teams. However, poor defense and an inability to win consistently in the trenches continue to drag them down.

The playoff contest against the 49ers, for example, showed the team's inability to finish during one of the biggest games in the organization's history. The Falcons built a 17-0 lead by the start of the second quarter before San Francisco came roaring back. The 49ers imposed their will with 149 rushing yards and two rushing touchdowns from running back Frank Gore.

When Atlanta needed its defense to show up against a physically dominant offense, the team fell short.

Tim Ireland/Associated Press

As the Falcons searched for a season-changing win Sunday against the Detroit Lions, that winning mentality still wasn't there. Atlanta blew a 21-0 halftime lead, which was the biggest collapse in the organization's history. 

What made the loss even more dumbfounding was the nature of how the Falcons let the game slip away. 

Atlanta Falcons Head Coach Mike Smith said after the game (via D. Orlando Ledbetter of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution), “I’m very disappointing in the way that we played in the second half in the football game.” He continued, “You can’t make the mistakes that we made in the second half against a good football team, because when you do they are going to come back and haunt you.”

First, Detroit's initial touchdown came courtesy of a 59-yard reception by wide receiver Golden Tate. What made this such an egregious error by the Falcons was the mental mistake made by safety Kemal Ishmael.

Tate ran a simple deep pattern. Ishmael's only job in what appeared to be a Cover-4 shell was to stay with the deepest threat to his side of the field. No other wide receiver was even in Ishmael's vicinity, yet the safety let Tate run right past him for an easy toss from Lions quarterback Matthew Stafford. 

This massive mental mistake wasn't the only one made by the Falcons' players or the team's staff. 

Detroit's next scoring drive was set up by a boneheaded throw from Falcons quarterback Matt Ryan. Ryan isn't known as one of the NFL's most nimble quarterbacks. Once he was flushed out of the pocket, Ryan decided to throw back to the wide side of the field from a weird body angle only to be easily intercepted by Lions safety Cassius Vaughn. 

SBNation.com captured how poor Ryan's decision really was: 

Those poor plays pale in comparison to Smith's mismanagement of the Falcons' final drive.

Despite surrendering the long touchdown and Ryan's interception, Atlanta still held a 21-19 lead with less than four minutes remaining.

On 3rd-and-10 with 1:50 left, the Falcons called a pass play instead of running the ball to wind down the clock. What made the call even worse was that wide receiver Julio Jones dropped an easy pass, which stopped the clock.

Instead of getting the ball with a minute or less, Detroit had one minute and 39 seconds to move the ball 63 yards and get into position for the game-winning field goal by kicker Matt Prater.

There was also an issue of Smith calling a timeout with 25 seconds remaining as the clock continued to run.

Ryan addressed the sequence of plays after the game, via AtlantaFalcons.com: 

"

We did a great job of getting the first two first downs. That's what you need to do in that situation. We had a fresh set of downs with I think one timeout that they had, and first down, run the ball, and then they call a timeout, which in those situations, in four‑minute situations, there's going to be runs that are zero‑yard gains, those kind of things. They've got a lot of guys in the box. On second down, obviously with a penalty, the clock doesn't continue to run. That makes it tough. And then on third down we have a pass play called, and then in those situations we've got to execute, I've got to execute and make sure that it's a completion so that clock continues to run. I think across the board, we feel like we gave them too much time and kind of didn't do our job. Offensively we did not do our job.

"

Mental mistake after mental mistake was committed by the Falcons during the second half, and that reflects directly on the coaching staff and a lack of preparation from the team.

Eventually, a coach's words fall on deaf ears after a certain amount of time in one place. The Falcons appear to have reached that point under Smith.   

It isn't a coincidence that the team's previous 2-6 record was the year Smith's predecessor left the team.

It's clear the Falcons peaked a couple seasons ago. The defense's performance under Smith makes it even more apparent. Even without adding the Lions' 385 yards of total offense, this is clearly the Falcons' worst defense in the last seven seasons. 

The unit isn't physically or mentally tough enough. 

Years	Total defense	Rushing defense	Passing defense	Points per game
2008	348.2	127.9	220.4	20.3
2009	348.9	106.9	241.9	20.3
2010	332.4	105.9	226.6	18.0
2011	333.6	97.0	236.6	21.9
2012	365.6	123.2	242.4	18.7
2013	379.4	135.8	243.6	27.7
2014*	412.1	137.7	274.4	27.6

The blame doesn't fall completely on Smith, though. 

Atlanta's head coach will receive most of the flak, but the Falcons were outmatched by an undermanned Detroit squad Sunday. 

The Lions were without the game's top wide receiver (Calvin Johnson), their starting running back (Reggie Bush), right tackle (LaAdrian Waddle) and the team's top three tight ends. Yet, Detroit's ramshackle offense was still able to move the ball and secure the victory. 

The Falcons severely lack talent in key areas, and that falls directly on general manager Dimitroff. 

No one can predict injuries, but the Falcons' problems extend beyond current injuries. 

On defense, they completely lack any type of edge-rushing presence. The defense didn't register a sack against Stafford. The team's linebackers struggle in coverage. Meanwhile, all the beef the Falcons added up front during the offseason to slow opposing rushing attacks hasn't played with any type of consistency. 

Offensively, Atlanta's injuries and problems along the offensive line speak for themselves. It doesn't excuse the coaching staff for playing an over-the-hill running back in Steven Jackson when there are more explosive options behind the veteran. Also, tight end continues to be a gaping hole for the Falcons. And even the team's talented wide receivers have let Ryan down with multiple drops. 

Depth and overall talent are glaring problems in Atlanta, and it's an offseason issue for Dimitroff or the team's next general manager to address. 

There was a time when the Falcons were considered one the premier organizations in the NFL. Their window quickly closed. It's one thing to battle each week and still lose a game. It's an entirely different thing to make errors in judgement and basically hand those games to the opponent.

"You know, we've got to get back home," Smith said after the game. "We've got to find a way to get better over the course of the bye week, and I think everybody needs to look in the mirror and self‑critique and really ‑‑ when we get back to work, have a great mindset and a great sense of focus."

As the bye week looms, major changes are needed at every level of the Falcons organization. If improvement isn't seen during the second half of the season, further changes will be required.