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Man...
1st Quarter: New England
2nd Quarter: Atlanta
3rd Quarter: New England
4th Quarter: Atlanta so far.

WE GOT SCREWED AGAIN!

I never say that a ref loses the game for you but they have made horrible calls against us all freaking game long. The Pats have had the game handed to them by the refs in critical moments.

Well... The Refs screwed us twice, Rossum gave New England life, and the defense lost it.

i think the pressure got to rossum in this one. he choked a couple of times on the returns. not to mention that mauling that was supposed to be pass coverage. ugghh! i thought we were going to actually pull it out until that play. i hope chris cash can come back because i think he actually is better than rossum.

Chris Cazh broke his forearm, you could see it flopping around after it hit Pass' leg. Yeah we definitely got screwed this game. The drive where Schaub was ruled out would have got us points and it was obvious the Pats couldn't stop us at all the 4th quarter.

Unfortunately we lost Cash for a couple months at least and ALL of our corners looked like garbage today. Of course it didn't help that Rod Coleman and Patrick Kerney were being held on EVERY play and the refs turned a blind eye on it until they got called out on national TV by the announcers for missing the Schaub out of bounds call. Ike Reese, while weak in pass coverage, showed he can fill in well in the middle for Hartwell and he will probably have to with Ed on crutches in the 2nd half.

Schaub looked terrific today and will probably end up in Detroit for Dre Bly or one of those big time WR's since Harrington sucks. I would love to bring Dre Bly in, but we have to get some talent in the defensive backfield from somewhere. Anyhow, I was very happy with our team today overall. I fel that if we can get a straight up game called by the refs we could dominate the Pats, so I'm hoping we see them in the Super Bowl this year where the refs don't get away with this sort of nonsense.

On a final note, is there anywhere we can write the league about having to watch that garbage game the refs called?

after the ref's made that crappy call about shaub stepping out, they panned in on mora and his red face. ANd then he screamed "f**K!" anyone could read his lips quite clearly. unbelievable call. wasn't the line judge right there? they ruined what looked like a scoring drive.
"f**k!" i say.

What was better is that the announcers called the refs out on both the momentum changing calls made by the refs. Usually they swing off the ref or the other teams nuts. This time they actually showed us some love.

The ref calls hurt us but our defenses inability to stop Brady killed us.

I suppose I can take solstice in knowing that this game was likely a loss for us anyways. We are only 1 win behind were I thought we would be at this point of the season.

Although it appears we have broken bones in both Hartwell and Cash plus Vick being questionable for the unknown future. Things are going south in that department.

Yes and my biggest issue with Brady killing our D is this....where the hell were our safeties? It seemed like everytime they hit a big play our safety was in man coverage with someone running a short route & it left of weaker DB's & LB's vulnerable deep. I understand that we wanted to stop the run but I would rather give up 250 yards rushing than 400 yards passing and demoralize our DB's.

We couldn't jump short routes at all because the safeties weren't behind the DB's and THAT is what cost us in the long run to be totally honest. At some point you have to allow your front 7 to stuff the run on their own.

And how many of the comeback or slant routes were wide open? There were five points of the game were the receiver was wide open and the coverage man was 5 yards behind him. You can't get a pick if you aren't in position to jump the route and being 5 yards back isn't going to do it.

wasn't our rush defense ranked number 2 last year? i know it was pretty good. what happened? ed jasper was a pretty good run stuffer but dang. how much has our over all defense really improved really?

We were a top 10 run defense last year. We fell off towards the end of the year because of sitting starts (and the KC blowout). The defense did regress this year in the run but it is better against the pass (we aren't among the 3 worst).

Our defense outside of sacks is very average.

Yes and when you rely on sacks it is dependant upon the refs calling holding on the O-line and it is very apparent to me that we are league's least favorite top tier team for some reason. Also, the loose coverage is what the DB's have to do when there are no safeties behind them, which is what I was talking about before. Our front 7 has got to play bigger against the run, with the only possible exception being Brady Smith.

About that call when Schaub "Stepped out"...if you noticed, the side it was on, was the Patriot's...and, if you also noticed it took him 15 seconds to make the call, giving the Patriots sideline a chance to influence him...pitiful...

I'm not going to blame this loss on anybody but the defense. The refs did screw us on that Schaub OOB play, but even if they had made the "right" call, there's still no excuse for how poorly our D was out there today.

Sure, they made some plays, but they gave up too many big plays, and it seemed like they were playing "bend but don't break" all day long, which is inexcusable. I'm going to rewatch the tape of the game I have, to see if I can pick out exactly why our defense looked bad today. 491 total yards says it all. It's very hard to win football games when you give up that much ground on defense.

Kudos to Schaub who had a coming out game today. You won't hear me say that we would've won with Vick at the helm, because even Vick may not have prevailed with the way our defense played.

Schaub wasn't perfect on the day, as his accuracy could use some fine tuning (he was throwing behind WRs all day), but he proved me wrong. I made this statement last week in my Vikings game review:



#8 musta been reading that because I have seemingly ate my words after what he did this week.

Watching the patriots run for over 100 yds yesterday,the seattle back alexander,and Mcgahee of buffalo I am starting to wonder if this defense can really stop the run.Why could we stop it last year but not this year? Is Lavalias or Babineaux the answer? Is it the linebackers not making the plays.We have not only a problem with stopping the run but also the pass against top flight QBs.I knew our secondary was going to get picked apart since the patriots are known for not giving up sacks and the falcon secondary can be dreadful.Watching brady fake webster out was embarrassing. Remember the bomb and what about the tackling it was bad trung to stop there tight end.

As of right now I don't think the falcon's have enough to win a super bowl.It will be the defense that determines how far we will go.The offense despite the inconsistenices of the receivers is finally on track and has enough.

The run defense is a major concern. Here are where our defense ranks:

Yards allowed: 24th (tied)
Yards per carry: 29th
Rushing 1st downs: 30th

This cannot continue if the Falcons want to win games. Especially, if the Falcons are going to be rather ho-hum in terms of the # of turnovers it forces. We currently rank 11th in that area, which is not bad, but I think if you are going to consistently give up over 100 yards rushing each game, you better hope that you are forcing turnovers more than we are (2 per game).

Only 2 more teams we have left on the schedule average less than 95 rushing yards per game. So this thing needs to be fixed immediately.