More MMQB: Inside the Christian McCaffrey Trade | Three Deep: The Broncos Can Finally Exhale | Ten Takeaways: Quiet Deadline Coming? | Six From Saturday: NFL Scout on Will Levis
I don’t know how far Atlanta’s going this year, but I think it’s safe to say the Falcons are on the way up.And to me, Marcus Mariota’s the perfect example of it—a guy the NFL had mostly given up on, and now the quarterback of a division leader.
We’re gonna take you through the wild finish to Falcons-Panthers, and it was . But we’ll start with how Atlanta’s in this spot, with the program that Arthur Smith and Terry Fontenot are building, one that’s uncovered so many diamonds in the rough, and squeezed every last little bit out of them.
There’s Caleb Huntley, the undrafted free-agent tailback who led the team with 91 yards rushing against the Panthers. There’s Tyler Allgeier, the rookie fifth-round running back who came up with 39 yards on the ground and 46 through the air. There’s journeyman Damiere Byrd, who made perhaps Sunday’s biggest play for the team. And there’s Mariota, who had a 105.2 passer rating against Carolina. And, sure, it’s unlikely he’ll ever live up to his 2015 draft position, but with Smith, he looks a lot more like the guy the Titans drafted back then.
“It starts with our guys—I really believe that we have an unselfish culture here, and when you come to work and you’ve got a bunch of guys that really just enjoy coming in and doing what’s best for the team, you’re going to find ways to win games,” Mariota said postgame, leaving Mercedes-Benz Stadium. “And to have that belief in each other I think is all that you need. You don’t have to worry about what other people think.
“We always believed that we could be pretty good, but at the same time, we just gotta take it one game at a time. And that’s what’s cool about these guys is they don’t really care, wins or losses, it’s just about improving. If we continue to have that mentality, I think we’ll like where we are at the end of the year.”
That level-headedness served the Falcons well Sunday, because things spun out of control repeatedly in the fourth quarter of an NFC South game that, unlikely as it would’ve seemed two months ago, wound up being for first place in the division.
The first big boom came with the Falcons in first-and-15 at the Carolina 47 with 2:26 left. That’s where Mariota found Byrd at the sticks to his right, hit him and then let Byrd do the rest—with the receiver crossing all the way back across to the left side of the field, then racing by the Panthers’ defense for a long touchdown.
“Yeah, it was just one of those plays where I thought based on the look, that we had an opportunity to get backside,” Mariota said. “Byrd did a great job of running the post-dig curl route and found a way to create space, and he made a good play.”
The score gave Atlanta a 31–28 lead with 2:14 left, after which the Falcons forced a turnover on downs, and kicked a field goal to make it 34–28. That left the Panthers with 36 seconds. It wound up being enough time for P.J. Walker to deliver a dime downfield to D.J. Moore for a 62-yard touchdown to tie it (how Carolina didn’t have anyone behind him, I don’t know) to seemingly win the game.
One problem: Moore ripped his helmet off in celebration, drawing a 15-yard penalty, making the extra point a 48-yarder. Eddy Piñeiro missed the kick, and he missed a 32-yarder in overtime, that one after the Panthers picked off Mariota, setting up Mariota to play hero again. His winding 30-yard run off a read-option keeper put Atlanta in position for Younghoe Koo to win the game with a 41-yard field goal.
“It was a zone read and actually I thought [Brian] Burns played it well; he kind of went down to the back and came back at me,” Mariota said. “So he gave me a full read, and I thought that I had a chance to get outside, but he did a good job of kind of continuing down. And then from there, I just tried to make a play. Our guys did a great job blocking down the field, and I knew once I got past the 50, that we had an opportunity to win.”
And so put the brakes on a roller-coaster ride for the first-place Falcons.
“I was a part of that Raiders-Chargers game last year, and that had a crazy, wild ending to it, too, but not really to the degree of this one,” Mariota said. “What’s cool is our guys continued to believe, and we understood that if we had a chance for the ball, we could win.”
Which, really, seems to encapsulate where the Falcons are in general right now.
