In the old days, the Falcons used to look good in the regular season, then promptly fall apart in the postseason.
Now, they’ve got a playoff win under their belt, but they’ve shifted their mental block to the 20-yard line.
According to Vaughn McClure of ESPN.com, the Falcons made a league-high for 2013 six trips inside the 20, and only got one touchdown out of it in a 30-23 loss to the Patriots last night.
For the season, they lead the league with 18 drives into the red zone, but are fifth from the bottom in touchdown conversions. Atlanta leads the league with 18 red zone drives this season but is fifth worst in touchdown conversion (seven, or 38.9 percent) on such drives.
“We’ve got to be able to put up points, and we should,” tight end Tony Gonzalez said. “We have the players and we have the system to get it done. We’ve done it before in the past. It’s just right now we’re not clicking, for some reason, throughout the whole game.
“We start out good. But, for whatever reason, in the second half, . . . and it’s all of us, collectively. It’s no one person that we’re going to point the finger at anybody. But I’ll tell you what: It’s got to get figured out.”
The problems were enough to be spread around.
Matt Ryan missed far too many open throws, including airballing Roddy White on fourth-and-2 from the 7. There were also too many drops by numerous receivers, and the lack of support from the run game didn’t help.
They might be close, but at 1-3, they’re losing time to fix things.