Atlanta Falcons head coach, Dan Quinn, gave his two cents on how his team will address their dropped passes issue from the 2017 season.
There’s no denying that the Atlanta Falcons didn’t achieve their highest goals in 2017; however, the real question is why this Dirty Birds squad, offensively, took a huge step back from their incredible 2016 campaign? Sure, the team lost former offensive coordinator, Kyle Shanahan, to the San Francisco 49ers, but there was no reason to believe the Falcons receiving core would struggle so badly.
In case you didn’t already know, the Falcons led the NFL during the 2017 season in total dropped passes. For a team who lost to the eventual Super Bowl LIII champions in the red zone, this lack of focus will make fans and coaches go crazy.
Nevertheless, the Falcons have been blessed by Dan Quinn’s arrival in 2015 and his ability to not make a mountain out of a molehill. While seeing Atlanta struggle to hang onto the football last year was extremely tough to watch, it doesn’t sound like Quinn is too concerned at all.
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Take a look at this quote from Quinn in Will McFadden’s article on the team’s official website:
"“I’ll tell you there’s a number of ways that we are going to address that, and it’s not just from the coaching side, which is kind of an exciting thing,” Quinn said. “This is a player-led team in a lot of respects, so a lot will be put on the players as well to make sure that focus, that intensity, to make sure that we are taking care of the ball like crazy. I treat drops much in the same fashion – if the ball is everything and if we’re dropping it, where was the focus lost? – almost like a fumble, so to speak. We’ve got work to do in that area. It wasn’t just one player, and it wasn’t just one position. Because, if that had been the case, that would have been an easy way to remove that person.”"
I completely respect Quinn’s notion of the Falcons being “all about the ball”. However, what’s concerning is that this team didn’t embody that persona in 2017. Not only did the offense struggle to protect the football, but it was uncanny to see how unlucky the Dirty Birds defense was when trying to force turnovers.
For instance, I don’t think any Falcons fan will forget Keanu Neal kneeing the football back up into the air in Philadelphia. That one play didn’t decide that NFC Divisional match-up, but it sure helped the Eagles’ chances of getting back into that game.
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Moving forward in 2018, Atlanta’s receivers need to have a chip on their shoulder. Sure, they frustrated fans at times, but at the end of the day, they were the cause of many Matt Ryan interceptions. If this team wants to win a Lombardi Trophy sometime soon, these kind of mistakes have to be eliminated.