Whew! That was another close one. These Falcons games always send me running for the Tums. Just once I'd love to see the Saints blow them out. At least this one finally resulted in a win. The Saints improve to 7-3 while the Falcons fall to 5-4. The Black & Gold carry a one and a half game division lead and a tiebreaker win against their closest rivals into their bye week. Life is good.
So, what is up with our coin tosses? Counting the OT coin toss today, we're 0 for 11 for the season. That's amazingly bad. Are the refs using trick coins out there?
I thought the refs gave us a break on that Roddy White pass interference penalty. If there was interference, I didn't see it. This was really fortunate because Scott Shanle intercepted Matt Ryan on the next play. But, as the refs giveth they sometimes taketh away. Later flags on Jimmy Graham for holding on the FG attempt and then pass interference on Tracy Porter to keep the Falcons drive alive to tie the game looked totally bogus.
Our run game was mostly non-existent today. Credit the Falcon's defense for shutting it down. They even shut down our usually very good screen pass attack. I counted four screen pass attempts and they all got blown up. The Falcons seemed intent on stopping Darren Sproles in this game and they were very successful at it. He only gained 1 yard on two rushing attempts and 2 yards on four receptions.
Roman Harper had a pretty good game. He later dropped what looked like a sure interception that would have sealed the win in the 4th quarter. Luckily for him, we got the win anyway. I have to admit I was sweating that John Kasey FG attempt to win the game in OT. I kept having visions of Garrett Hartley's missed OT kick from last year.
You gotta admit that was a ballsy move by Falcons coach Mike Smith to go for it on 4th and inches in OT. Thankfully for us, they came up short and we got the ball already in range for a John Kasey field goal. I'm sure Smith will catch a lot of flack this week for that decision. As Jerry Seinfeld would say, that's a shame.