Texans slow down Falcons’ playoff push, 17-10
Atlanta recovered the ball after a Falcons defensive tackle Vance Walker (99) grabbed the arm of Houston Texans quarterback T.J. Yates (13), causing a fumble, in first quarter of an NFL football game on Sunday, Dec. 4, 2011, in Houston. AP
HOUSTON — The Falcons’ march to the NFL playoffs suffered a setback on Sunday.
Enlarge photo Dave Einsel, AP Falcons quarterback Matt Ryan (2) is grabbed by Houston Texans defensive end Antonio Smith (94) in the second quarter.
T.J. Yates, who played his high school football at Pope High in Marietta, led the Texans to a 17-10 victory over the Falcons before 71,545 fans at Reliant Stadium.
Yates, who made his first NFL start, received ample help from a stout defense and running back Arian Foster. The Falcons chipped in with some overthrown passes, dropped footballs and untimely penalties that helped erase two touchdowns.
“That was not the kind of performance that we want to have, especially at this point in the season,” Falcons coach Mike Smith said.
Yates, a 24-year old rookie, out-played Falcons quarterback Matt Ryan, who was under duress from Houston’s blitzing 3-4 defense. Yates completed 12 of 25 passes for 188 yards and one touchdown. He had a passer rating of 86.8.
Ryan, who overthrew three long passes and was intercepted twice, has had much better days. He completed 20 of 47 passes for 267 yards and one touchdown. He had a passer rating of 50.6 points.
The Texans improved to 9-3. The Falcons dropped to 7-5, and could find themselves two games behind the New Orleans Saints in the NFC South if the Saints handled the Detroit Lions in the late Sunday night game.
With four games to play, the Falcons will need the Saints to partially collapse in order to defend their NFC South title. Realistically, the Falcons are in a battle for one of the two wildcard slots with Dallas, the New York Giants, Chicago, Detroit and Seattle.
The loss was difficult for the Falcons to accept.
“We feel like this was a game that we should have dominated,” cornerback Dunta Robinson said. “I can honestly say that the only team that beat us this year was the Chicago Bears. The rest of the games, we shot ourselves in the foot, on both sides of the ball.
“If we want to be a dominant football team, we can’t beat ourselves. We are too good of a team to make some of these mistakes.”
With the score tied 10-10, Robinson was one of the culprits.
Linebacker Mike Peterson had intercepted Yates and had an apparent 32-yard touchdown. But, on the other side of the field, Robinson was in a fierce battle for inside position with Houston wide receiver Kevin Walter. Robinson was called for a holding penalty to erase the touchdown.
With a new set of downs, the Texans put together a 19-play drive. Foster capped it with a 1-yard touchdown to put the Texans ahead with just over six minutes to play.
Instead of taking a 17-10 lead on Peterson’s “touchdown” the Falcons were down.
Earlier in the game, on third and 8 from the Falcons 15, Yates was hit by defensive tackle Vance Walker. Safety James Sanders picked up the fumble and returned it for a touchdown. Even though no whistle was blown, players from both teams thought it was an incomplete pass and wandered onto the field, anticipating a Texans’ field goal attempt.
“The ruling on the field was the ball was dislodged from his hand before his hand went forward, so the fumble was ruled,” referee Bill Levy said. None of the players who wandered onto the field interfered with the play. “It was what we call a double foul after a change. What we decided to do is offset those penalties at the spot where the Atlanta player came on the field.”
Defensive end Ray Edwards was announced at the Falcons player who came onto the field, but Levy later announced there were multiple players from each side on the field.
The play was called back and instead of a touchdown, the Falcons were given the ball on their 35. Ryan was intercepted three plays later.
The Falcons started off misfiring.
Ryan missed on deep passes to Roddy White and Julio Jones on their first and third plays from scrimmage. He also was intercepted later on a flea flicker when the Falcons tried to catch the Texans’ safeties creeping up to help in the run game.
Ryan was not pleased with his game. The Texans basically dared him to beat them with some deep passes and he didn’t pull it off.
Smith said the offense played in spurts.
“We had opportunities, specifically early,” Ryan said. “We had some shots designed that were really good. I just missed on them.”
The Texans came up to stop running back Michael Turner and then tried to blitz Ryan into throwing quickly. Turner was held to 44 yards on 14 carries.
White, who had two back-to-back 100-yard games, caught four passes for 51 yards and a touchdowns.
“Our rationale coming into the game was let’s try and hit some of those balls down the field,” Ryan said. “We designed them to get one-on-one matchups with our guys and kind of pushed those safeties off. We just didn’t make enough plays. We didn’t make the plays when we needed to.”
Instead of keeping pace with the Saints and moving to the head of the playoff class, the Falcons find themselves back in the middle of the NFC pack.
–D. Orlando Ledbetter, The Atlanta Falcons beat blog
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336 comments Add your comment
12 men in the huddle
December 4th, 2011
5:48 pm
A disappointing loss to say the least…..especially since this was a winnable road game playing against a 3rd string quarterback. Ryan frankly, had a turrible game! Missing those wide open receivers on that first series of downs was inexcusable. Stupid penalties hurt us big time as well. Julio Jones makes some nice catches….then drops easy balls and STOPS thinking out there when he should have been hustling back to the huddle and forgets we are out of time outs and the clock running down! I suspect if they gave him a random drug test.,,,,he’d fail. You can’t make one good play….then make a bad play…,and think you have contributed anything! We wasted alot of draft picks on this clown. We will, in all probabilty still grab a wildcard for what it’s worth. But we just plain don’t have enough football brains on this team to go very far.
Illinidawg
December 4th, 2011
5:49 pm
You must be speaking of your home state and the city of chicago, with all of it’s murders and crime. Are maybe you’re still mad for that stomping the bayou bengals put on your mutts last night. Maybe you are still mad because your dogs, dawgs are whatever you want to call them, were embarrassed on national tv. The dawgs and the failcants has one thing in common, losers and you.
BLACK COBRA
December 4th, 2011
5:49 pm
T.J Yates you got good future kid. You outplayed matty melt.
Lol
DMF1120
December 4th, 2011
5:50 pm
Hey JUGGERNAUT – we have been admitting we lost today and for the short comings of the team that caused it. As for trash talking NOLA, that’s been going on for 40 years but wouldn’t happen at all if it weren’t for the NOLA trolls that spend all their time on this blog trash talking the Falcons fans.
WTF?
December 4th, 2011
5:50 pm
Hey Jugger nugget go pester somebody on your own message board. If the Aints fans would start no SH…. there wouldn’t be no SH… Besides you aren’t talking football your just trash talkin’ the Birds anyway.
Htownwin
December 4th, 2011
5:51 pm
What do failcon fans say now ?
YOU GUYS WERE OVER CONFIDENT BEFORE THE GAME. THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS IF YOU TAKE OPPONENTS LIGHTLY.
oUCH…DOES IT HURT ???
lamac66
December 4th, 2011
5:51 pm
This is some funny sh#t up in here..lol
Job P
December 4th, 2011
5:52 pm
FIRE MIKE SMITH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Juggernaut
December 4th, 2011
5:53 pm
WTF and DMF ….vent your anger for something good. Don’t act like bunch of sissies.
NOW HOW DOES THAT FEEL. Before you make fun of other teams take a look at your own team.
BLACK COBRA
December 4th, 2011
5:54 pm
GO texans !!!
BLACK COBRA
December 4th, 2011
5:55 pm
MIKE SMITH : CHOKER
MATTY MELT : CHOKER
M. TURNER : CHOKER
TRASH WHITE : FUMBLER….
Jay
December 4th, 2011
5:55 pm
Matt Ryan isn’t good enough to take us all the way. He is what he is, it is to accept it and move on. Unfortunately it will take management 2-3 years to realize this truth.
Dannyboy
December 4th, 2011
5:56 pm
Another sub-par outing…outcoached, outschemed, and outplayed by another inferior opponent. Our coaching staff needs to be revamped, as I have said before; players take on the personality of their leaders..I guess our players’ leaders like to sit on their “balls” so the players don’t like to play “ball”. One blitz all day against a rookie qb..looks like BVG’s soft zone coverage is just that SOFT!!! as for the offense and Mularkey, y’all can find me hanging from the 14th street bridge.
PlanB
December 4th, 2011
5:59 pm
Trade Ryan to the Colts for that #1 and more if possible. Do this before everyone else catches on. Draft Luck. He will be better with these receivers as a rookie than Ryan.
The Nature Boy
December 4th, 2011
6:01 pm
Ledbetter, the pass was dropped by Julio….just love the PC writing about another Falcon over-hyped rookie. Whats the Falcons record this year againt teams with winning records? Uh-huh, thats what i thought. this is NO kinda playoff team.
WTF?
December 4th, 2011
6:02 pm
Jugger nugget just keep trash talkin’ behind the keyboard. I suspect you are probably not so vocal in person as is usually the case with most Narlins’ fans. Been there done that spent 15 years on the Gulfcoast and learned Aints fans are trash, worse than Philly fans and they are all talk no action so you just have fun on this little blog but if you wanna name call then be prepared to back it up and not hide behind the keyboard.
Buzzman
December 4th, 2011
6:06 pm
And we traded alot of draft picks to get a wide receiver who cannot catch, doesn’t pay attention in the hurry up. Send him back to Alabama with a IOU. Roddy White needs to start catching, he has the most dropped passes in the NFL. Can’t say to much to Matty Meltdown. He still isn’t a all around quarterback. Next year, look for a running back with speed. Turner is good at short runs but we need one with speed. Well so much for the playoffs this year….
IlliniDawg
December 4th, 2011
6:06 pm
@JuggerNOT: so it’s okay to come on the opposing team’s blog and say not one constructive or interesting thing, but instead talk total trash and put down that team and their fans… with the obvious intent to incite anger and resentment. But God forbid someone might get a little peeved and talk trash back at you? You get what you deserve. Now go find a NOLA newspaper to read. Oh wait, you guys don’t read the paper – you wipe you a** with it!
mike
December 4th, 2011
6:08 pm
FIGHT, FIGHT, FIGHT
Thomas Dimitroff
December 4th, 2011
6:08 pm
Guys, guys, settle down. Julio just dropped a few balls, Dun-nothing Robinson is a “game changer”…for the other team, the O-line is invisible, and Matt Ryan’s noodle arm is great….at in- completions and overthrown balls. Things are lookin up!!!
Blake
December 4th, 2011
6:10 pm
Bumbling Fumbling Falcons….What is It with these Atlanta sports teams…we have never had a dominant team In Atlanta except the 95′ Braves. This team has an awesome Owner and General Manager and Coach and Coaching staff and all that firepower on Offense and we can’t beat a team starting a 3rd string rookie QB. Hell we couldn’t even get pressure on Him. Pathetic..I didn’t have a good feeling about this one going In but I hoped that the Falcons would have proved me wrong but again they allowed a rookie QB to look all world and I knew they would…Horrible….just Horrible…These are games Elite teams win but Atlanta Isn’t an Elite team….If they make it to the playoffs they’re one and done…
p.l. bridges
December 4th, 2011
6:10 pm
This loss was the worst of the season, including the saints game! The last second drop by Jones was inexcusable, and a clear example of not having his head in the game which first became evident after his poor rout caused the games second interception.
Rookie recievers are rarely great, and while I think that he will give us some great play in the future, he is obviously not the game breaker that he was billed to be. That along with two TD’s called back and two bad over throws for a sure six proves that explosive is not something that this team is even approaching!
The Saints exploded on this Houston team early in the season when Houston was healthy, and we did not approach exploding or begin to even bother their third string QB.with our starting front four!
The depleted secondary did a decent job, but I also have to wonder what is wrong with Ryan? He seems like’s some other teams QB not our pro bowler from last year. I only hope that it was the strange year with no camp or OTA’s, and not a sign of more to come!
With all of that said it was still a game that we could have tied in the last second, but our fenom could not hold on to a ball that hit him between both of his hands with no obstruction, and that is not acceptable! Mike Jenkins would have made that catch and that’s just sad!
With our history, a winning season should be the only must, but considering all of the pre season hype, this club will be lucky to make the playoffs much less actually win their first play off game
since Smith and Ryan arrived!
I love this team and have followed since day one as a young child, but some of the losses, and even wins have stung this year!
I think we have a great staff, but we badly need secondary depth, will soon need a TE and RB, and we still have no pass rush!
Rise up?
PLB
Run4ever
December 4th, 2011
6:11 pm
Commercial: Rise Up-What do Falcons do. Yea Right. What do Falcons do? Lay fat rotten eggs.
WTF?
December 4th, 2011
6:12 pm
I here ya TD! Just don’t understandWTF is going on in the A town!
Sam
December 4th, 2011
6:13 pm
D Robinson, go f yourself. Worthless. He needs to get cut right away. Too bad we don’t have any warm bodies in the secondary. The falcons are mediocre at best as long as mike smith is the head coach. Matt Ryan got outplayed by a 3rd string qb. Missing TWO wide open deep throws
texans fan
December 4th, 2011
6:13 pm
go texans
Sunset Lee
December 4th, 2011
6:14 pm
Well they are who we thought they were!
sc04
December 4th, 2011
6:14 pm
Calm down people! We’ll still make the playoffs because Detroit and Chicago are also in a downward spiral, but play a tougher schedule than us.
Dunte Robinson
December 4th, 2011
6:14 pm
Hey guys, I’m laughing my butt to the bank. How easy is it to make some money huh. Taught my boy Ray Edwards to follow in my footsteps.
Big Bad Blogger
December 4th, 2011
6:15 pm
LOL!!! The real “Losers” are the texan and sAint trolls on a Falcons Blog!!!! Grow a pair and get off our blogs!!! Seems that all of you are some “Sore” Winners… Do you fear my Birds making the playoffs? Why, perhaps because we might just upset your team(s)… Any given Sunday, Anything can happen!!! sAINTS fans have gotten their super bowl trophy in the form of a “government handout”: now they think they are the steelers of the 70s. You guys are only a drew bree’s injury away from being this years colts….
Tom
December 4th, 2011
6:15 pm
PI thanks for talking football. Thought Abe had a pretty good game and agree that the depleted secondary wasnt bad other than Robinson. I would like to see Edwards sit and as much as I like TD these two huge FA acquisitions have been a huge bust. Would rather see Bierman and Sidbury.
Leading the league in dropped passes, thats not Ryans fault, but the overthrows and that last penalty for delay of game fall on him.
JD
December 4th, 2011
6:15 pm
Falcons would only make playoffs as consolation team to others failures and never make it past the first round. They are the NFL poster child for poor play and lack of heart, a real shame considering the potential talent.
The Falcons can’t catch, can’t score in the red zone, can’t defend the pass and can’t manage to establish any consistent winning attitude. It is doubtful these Falcons will ever measure up an elite status given mediocre staff from Mike smith on down. Matt Ryan is way overratted and Julio Jones is a joke. The list goes on…but suffice to say, this is NOT a playoff caliber team. If I were Aurthur Blank I’d go back to the drawing board cause this Falcon team lacks leadership and heart.
Illinidawg
December 4th, 2011
6:16 pm
Right back at you illinidawg and the woman who raised you. You talk like your dawgs play, down right awful.
Juggernaut
December 4th, 2011
6:18 pm
We crushed healthy texans while your team couldn’t ……………sorry you want some good words.
I am so sorry for your loss.
Run4ever
December 4th, 2011
6:18 pm
Oh Yea, M. Turner wasn’t going to have an impact in this game, because of his groin injury. You could pretty much dictate how the Falcons were going to play the Texans, and they played good enough to win, but again, stupid penalties and dropped balls doomed any chance that they had to do that. Good teams find a way to win, in spite of their known shortcomings. Average teams can only hope to eek out a win with minimum turnovers. Falcons-What kind of team are you? At this point, I dare to say they are slightly above average for a bad team and slightly below average for a good team. “Lukewarm”
junejay
December 4th, 2011
6:18 pm
ok guys it’s not the end of the world. Jeez. team has talent. Just didn’t execute well today for a variety of reasons. Blame can go around.
Changes I think for next season:
running back – turner is good but imo just too slow at this point. He can’t more laterally
fullback – need our starter back
need a slightly better o-line
Otherwise I think next year we will be starting all veterns. Will hopefully have an easier schedule. So yeah… next year sadly. I still think we will make the wild card but will lose the first game.
Sam
December 4th, 2011
6:19 pm
Playoffs! Even if the falcons make playoffs, they’re one and done. How long are we going to accept mediocrity? I do agree with mike Keenan when he said the team plays tight and they have no killer instinct. If I hear mike smith say “it’s my responsibility. I take the blame for the losss” I’m gonna shoot myself. Stop talking and discipline your sorry a$$ players
Juggernaut
December 4th, 2011
6:20 pm
When you guys lose all you do is start talking trash about city and all that.
Just like your team, you never respect your opponents, so how do you expect other teams and their fans to respect you.
You talked trash before GB game and got thrashed, same with NO and now with Texans.
WTF?
December 4th, 2011
6:22 pm
I hope your right Junejay but in reality this team doesn’t have the heart to go to the playoffs.
Juggernaut
December 4th, 2011
6:23 pm
FAILCON EXCUSES :
1. Referees
2. OC
3. DC
4. steven martin aka bozo smith
Real Issue :
1. Rookie outplayed
2. Failed against 1 Defense
3. Fumbling receivers
4. Over confidence
5. Mediocre QB
WTF?
December 4th, 2011
6:25 pm
Jugger nugget…..How bout talkin some football….HUH? I fyou know what one looks like and you not on here just to piss people off.
WISCONSIN WOODLOE
December 4th, 2011
6:26 pm
Lol….atl lost to Texans ? the texans with 3rd QB….
Damn…is there any way Falcons play in college football ? I mean with this level of play they don’t deserve to be in NFL.
Go Packs go
Juggernaut
December 4th, 2011
6:27 pm
WTF @ Can you read ? What do you think did I comment above.
WTF?
December 4th, 2011
6:29 pm
Nope went to school in Narlins’ reading was optional.
JoFo
December 4th, 2011
6:29 pm
Oh well! At least we know some things never change (Falcons are inconsistent) and the sAINTS are still living legends in their own mind!!! LOL!
Juggernaut
December 4th, 2011
6:30 pm
WTF @ I am not trying to put salt on the wound. Its just that you guys don’t respect other team fans and infact that guy boo brees was poking fun at texans that it is like bye week.
WTF?
December 4th, 2011
6:30 pm
My page didn’t refresh before you wrote anything that remotely related to football. Jugger nugget.
Juggernaut
December 4th, 2011
6:30 pm
Now Eat your own words.
matt
December 4th, 2011
6:30 pm
matt ryan has done nothing but give you all winning seasons… idiots.
cb
December 4th, 2011
6:31 pm
Matty Ice doesnt stink; its the offensive line that cannot block a damn soul. If he had more time to throw the ball he would not have over thrown those long balls. But he did make some awesome throws after those missed in the first quarter and the WR’s just couldnt catch anything today. We need some offensive linemen that block and WR that can catch!!