Wiedmer: Falcons and Titans look sadly the same

Atlanta Falcons quarterback Matt Ryan (2) walks off the field after an NFL football game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Sunday, Sept. 11, 2016, in Atlanta. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers won 31-24.(AP Photo/David Goldman)
Atlanta Falcons quarterback Matt Ryan (2) walks off the field after an NFL football game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Sunday, Sept. 11, 2016, in Atlanta. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers won 31-24.(AP Photo/David Goldman)
photo Mark Wiedmer

As any Tennessee Vols fan can happily tell you this morning, you can make too much of the opening game of a long football season.

That said, if you are a fan of either the Atlanta Falcons, Tennessee Titans or both, you might have more than a little cause for concern after each team lost its NFL regular-season opener Sunday due to flaws that were frustratingly familiar to those who follow them.

Let's start with the Falcons, who reprised a key shortcoming from recent years by scoring a touchdown on just one of four red-zone opportunities in a 31-24 home loss to Tampa Bay. Penalties, poor execution and an unreliable running game would again be the main culprits of this maddening trend.

"Third downs and red zone, we've got to be good there offensively," Falcons quarterback Matt Ryan said. "We weren't good there today."

At least Ryan was good in one area he has struggled with in recent years. He didn't throw a single interception while hitting a solid 27 of 39 passes for 334 yards and two touchdowns. In a game in which he was sacked three times, that's a good sign.

What's a very bad sign is a rushing game that generated but 52 net yards, hardly the stuff of championship dreams.

Then there's a defense that missed several tackles at key moments, including at the end of the first half when the Bucs' Charles Sims escaped a handful of would-be tacklers on a 23-yard scoring reception.

Said free safety Ricardo Allen to ESPN.com after this latest disappointing Falcons defeat: "We beat ourselves. If we were going to win that game, we had to do what we did best. And we didn't do that. We weren't us. We didn't play to our standard."

A cynic might ask just what that standard is, or sourly surmise that the Birds played exactly to their standards. After all, this is a franchise that hasn't reached the playoffs since 2012.

Sunday's shortcomings - poor red zone production, a weak rushing game and a defense that spends far too long on the field - have shown up time and time again dating back to the 2013 season, whether the coach was Mike Smith or current boss Dan Quinn.

Beyond that, Quinn - who was credited with building outstanding and overpowering defenses for the Seattle Seahawks - watched the Falcons record no sacks against the Bucs while surrendering four touchdown passes to second-year quarterback Jameis Winston.

With a wretched running game that makes it all but impossible to control the clock, it's hard to see how a defense that can't force sacks has any hope of reaching the playoffs. Especially when the Falcons must play road games at Oakland, Denver, Seattle and Tampa Bay, which all won on Sunday.

Whether their future looks shakier than the Titans is a tough call.

A home team with a 10-0 halftime lead against a team that just lost its quarterback for the year probably shouldn't lose if it expects to reach the playoffs for the first time since 2008. (Then again, Tennessee is in the AFC South, which had three of its four teams lose Sunday, with the Houston Texans the exception.)

Yet that's what Tennessee did on its way to a 25-16 loss to Minnesota and 36-year-old journeyman quarterback Shaun Hill, who's out there only because Teddy Bridgewater was lost for the season with a knee injury.

To make Sunday's collapse worse, second-year quarterback Marcus Mariota threw an interception he should have known better than to throw that was returned for a touchdown while coughing up the ball a second time on a botched handoff that also resulted in a defensive score.

Mariota defenders, of whom there are justifiably many, might be able to explain away the fumbled handoff, blaming it on a bad snap, the running back failing to secure the ball or something else. But the interception was all on Mariota, and it's a play that's happened more than once in his young career. Beyond that, that pick not only erased a 10-6 Titans lead, it took away a chance to build on that lead with a field goal because it occurred at the Minnesota 23-yard-line.

Said Titans coach Mike Mularkey with brutal clarity: "The turnovers obviously were catastrophic."

Over a 16-game NFL regular season schedule, no loss on the opening weekend is catastrophic unless you lose a key player in the process. The Titans may have momentarily done that, at least for a week or two, with key linebacker Derrick Morgan leaving the game with a left hamstring injury. The Falcons' Julio Jones also appeared to tweak an ankle in the fourth quarter. He went back on the field but was clearly not his normally indefensible himself.

But the biggest problem with both these losses was their similarity to past defeats. It already seems like a season traveling a frustratingly familiar path for each franchise.

In words that could have been spoken by both Falcons and Titans, Atlanta's Jones said: "We just have to play better ball. We shot ourselves in the foot."

Again.

Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com.

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