What Bothered Coach Arthur Smith Most in Falcons Loss?
The Atlanta Falcons were blown out by the Philadelphia Eagles 32-6 at Mercedes-Benz Stadium on Sunday. It was the head coaching debut for Falcons head coach Arthur Smith, and he wasn't hiding from his or the team's performance.
"It's a long season to go but I certainly didn't do a good job of getting us ready to go today," said Smith.
READ MORE: Eagle 32, Falcons 6 - What went Wrong?
Smith was most critical of the team's performance when it came to committing penalties. The Falcons committed 12 penalties against the Eagles. Many of them in crucial situations.
Said Smith: “You're going to have penalties. Nobody that's in this league is coaching the hold. That doesn't happen. Those fouls are part of the game. I gotta go back and look why those ones late. What we need to do better."
"Again, I don't want to overreact to that," continued Smith "The officials have a hard job. I don't want to blame them for anything. I gotta see what we're doing, make sure it's something obvious, we made a mistake there. We're just dropping back and they're playing zone coverage and guys going routes. I don't know. I have to look at that."
But it's not the in-play penalties that bothered Smith as much as another series of gaffes
"It's the stuff, presnap, false starts," said Smith. "The things you try to pride yourself on, and we do in that situation. You're backed up, you're going to give them a short field. You get down on the 2-yard line and you have an illegal formation. I've got to clean that up. So, yeah, I do put that on me."
Some clutch calls went against Atlanta that could have turned the game including a touchdown catch by Dallas Goedert with two seconds left in the first half that looked to have hit the ground. The Eagles were leading 7-6 at the time.
"Again, you're in the heat of the game," said Smith. "My opinion didn't matter. I was pretty much asking what they're seeing out there. It's a scoring play. It doesn't matter whether you're under two minutes or not, they're going to look at it and confirm it. Again, they got a hard job. I was trying to ask him what they were looking at is pretty much what I was doing."
After his first game as a head coach, Smith vows to get better.
"I'm going to evaluate everything," said Smith. "Whether we win or lose, we gotta turn it around. We got 16 more of these things. Like I said, I've been in worse situations. The narratives write themselves. We had won, you can write the narratives. You lose neither one of them are true because we got a long journey ahead of us and we gotta get better.
"Where I think I'm frustrated is I gotta evaluate what I'm doing, whether it's coaching, messaging, about let's get lined up and not when you're on the two-yard line get in an illegal formation. That's the stuff that really concerns me."
"I'm not trying to be a martyr here. That's my job as head coach. I'm responsible for the entire team. When you go out there and you have those self-inflicted wounds right there, that's a problem."
The schedule doesn't get any easier as Atlanta must travel to Tampa Bay next week to take on Tom Brady and the Buccaneers.
Not only are the Buccaneers 1-0 and defending Super Bowl Champions, they'll have two extra days of preparation and home-field advantage against Atlanta. Tampa Bay beat the Dallas Cowboys 31-29 last Thursday night.
The Falcons had trouble containing Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts, who came into the game with a 1-3 career record. He left Mercedes-Benz Stadium having completed 27 of 35 passes for 264 yards and three touchdowns.
Brady and the Buccaneers will present an even bigger challenge.
