Atlanta Falcons head coach Mike Smith speaks to players on the sidelines during their game against the Pittsburgh Steelers on Dec. 14, 2014, in Atlanta. ATLANTA — In any normal NFL regular season, the Atlanta Falcons’ ninth loss of the year with two games still to play would have been reason enough for a eulogy inside the Georgia Dome late Sunday afternoon. Quite possibly for both the season and the head coach.
And that may still come to pass. Just because the Falcons toil in the NFC South — where mediocrity would actually be a vast improvement — doesn’t mean both their fans and front office don’t expect and deserve more than the product that lost 27-20 to Pittsburgh.
While it may bring momentary relief in some corners of Falcons Nation to remain in a virtual tie for the division despite a 5-9 record, the reality remains that the Falcons — viewed a Super Bowl contender at season’s dawn — are now all but assured of a second straight losing season under seventh-year coach Mike Smith.
Throw in the fact that it’s hard to see these Bad News Birds suddenly sprouting eagles’ wings and soaring into the playoffs in 2015 and you wonder more and more how anything but a Super Bowl berth from this year’s model can save Smith’s job.
There’s also the fan support itself, which was so slight on Sunday that it appeared as if more than half the Dome was bathed in Steeler Black and Gold, Pittsburgh supporters out-yelling Falcons on every key play.
“You learn to expect that,” said Atlanta receiver Roddy White. “Their fans travel wherever they go. They’ve built a great tradition, won a lot of Super Bowls. People want to be a part of that.”
What Falcons fans have learned to expect is that the Dreary Birds will disappoint. Or at least not pleasantly surprise. After all, this frustrating franchise, born in 1965, never enjoyed back-to-back winning seasons until 2008 and 2009, which also just happened to be Smith’s first two years as head coach. Then came the back-to-back-to-back playoff runs from 2010 through 2012.
Sadly, all that forward momentum seems stuck in reverse again, even if a win at New Orleans six days from today and a victory over Carolina inside the Dome on Dec. 28 would guarantee the Falcons a playoff berth for the fourth time in five years.
“We’re just glad to be in the situation we’re in,” Smith said in defeat. “We know what we have to do. I can promise you this: There’s going to be a lot of Atlanta Falcons (fans) in that (Super) Dome. I have no doubt in my mind that there will be a lot. So we’ll go down there, and we’re going to compete against our arch rival.”
That arch rival, of course, has been just about as bad, if not worse, than the Falcons to date. Entering tonight’s game at Chicago, New Orleans is 5-8. The whole division is so bad that Carolina currently owns the lead with a 5-8-1 record, even though overtime has actually made ties more unusual than teams winning divisions with losing records.
Even more bizarre is that due to the NFL’s wildcard format, Atlanta could actually host a first-round game as a division champ. And were wideout Julio Jones — on the inactive list for Pittsburgh — to turn in the kind of performance he did against the Packers last week (11 catches for 259 yards), is anyone certain that the Falcons, bad as they are, couldn’t pull the upset inside the Georgia Dome?
“It’s a blessing,” said wideout Devin Hester. “Fortunately, we still control our own destiny.”
But should Smith still control this team? Would winning these last two regular-season games to clinch a playoff spot with a 7-9 record show he’s still the right man for the job?
When running back Steven Jackson says, as he did on Sunday, “I really can’t pinpoint why we have lows in the first half versus the second half. … At the beginning of the season we started fast and didn’t finish strong,” is that a good thing or a bad thing?
Yes, they’re a better second-half team. But if it’s at the expense of the first half — remember that they trailed Green Bay by 24 points at halftime last Monday — are you getting better or just plugging one leak in the dike only to have another open?
Why does it seem as if the players are no longer strongly in Smith’s corner, that they attempt to say all the right things — as when quarterback Matt Ryan noted, “We’ve got to have the best week of practice we’ve had this year, prepare as best we can, and cut loose when we get down to New Orleans” — but the on-field performance increasingly falls flat?
And after seven seasons, isn’t Smith digging his own grave when he says, “We didn’t play well enough to win the ball game,” and “Like a lot of you who watched the game today, we felt like we had a lot of chances to have a different outcome”?
Might not a different coach deliver a different outcome? And perhaps a different general manager to replace Thomas Dimitroff as well?
Yes, they can still make the playoffs, and possibly shock the world once in them, but if they don’t, is it not time to make a change, given that the the Atlanta defense — and remember that defense is supposed to be Smith’s expertise — entered Sunday as the NFL’s worst among 32 teams?
“I think it’s going to be a very interesting two weeks, not only for the NFC South, but all across the NFL,” Smith said.
Yes, it is. Both in terms of which teams are in the playoffs and which coaches are out of a job. And when it comes to the Falcons, they could experience both far more easily than they could experience neither.
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com