Breaking the Rule Sports Column

Cautiously confident.

That’s how I’d describe my feelings towards the Atlanta Falcons right now.

Sitting at 6-2 and a one game lead in the NFC South, the Dirty Birds still say they haven’t played their best football yet.

I agree. Take, for example, my thoughts while watching the game versus Tampa Bay:

Early first quarter: We are gonna run all over them! They don’t stand a chance! The Saints killed these guys!

Early second quarter: What a great offensive series so far! These guys can’t stop us for anything! 14-0 and the sky’s the limit!

Late second quarter: Um….what happened to that lead?

In a span of ten minutes, we went from a two touchdown lead to leading by a field goal heading into the half. Momentum was definitely with the Bucs, and all three phases of the game were going well in spurts for us.

Through most of the third quarter, we built up another lead, by 13 this time. And once again, something failed miserably (this time special teams).

Poof! The lead was trimmed, the security gone, and the tension high on yet another Atlanta football game.

This time was even worse than before: In a span of 15 seconds (of the game clock), Atlanta was up by ten, up by thirteen, and then up by only six. Not. Okay.

So where does the confidence come from? The attitude of the team. Mike Smith has these guys playing with the right mindset; just look at the responses to reporters after the win.

For those who don’t know, Tampa head coach Raheem Morris made waves with a comment of his team being the best in the NFC. Now, those were taken slightly out of context (he later admitted it was to spur his team on), but hey, his team’s drinking the Kool-Aid.

But upon beating their rivals, Atlanta players had only respect.

“We were big-time resilient against a big time team,” linebacker Mike Petersen said to an Associated Press reporter.

Big time team? One of the two youngest rosters in the National Football League?

Good.

There won’t be any overlooking opponents. And according to Smith, nobody’s happy despite being number one in the NFC.

According to Pat Yasinkas’ ESPN.com blog post, Smith said this:

“They know we haven’t put together the type of football game for 60 minutes in all three phases that we could play.”

I’m still waiting for a complete effort, but you can’t be unhappy with the results so far.

Posted by Caleb Rule on Nov 11 2010. Filed under Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.