by Bill Feig - AP

Don't expect Matt Ryan and the Falcons to overlook at the Redskins. (AP Photo/Bill Feig, File)

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There's a danger with a game like this.

The Washington Redskins have been no one's idea of a great or even good team this season. Their fans are dealing with tragic missteps at every level of the organization with the impassiveness of true stoics, but it's clear that this is a team that's a mess. In a lot of ways, they may seem like the perfect opponent for the Falcons, who are reeling a bit after two tough losses against quality teams the last couple of weeks. Though I wouldn't dare suggest that Mike Smith & Co. would bring an unprepared team against Washington, it's still a very real danger that this team, coming off a bye week and with a lot to prove, could come out of the gate strong against the Falcons.

It's often said that good teams win the games they're supposed to, and a punishing effort this weekend would put us at 5-3 and firmly in that warm and cozy bracket. This is a game we definitely should win, but desperate teams can do interesting things. Hopefully the Falcons swing the hammer early on Sunday.

How about some links, gang?

• Despite being banged up, both Sam Baker and Roddy White are expected to play this weekend. With all the negative injury news we've gotten over the last couple of weeks, this is like a fresh breath of air carrying a $100 bill your way.
• To absolutely no one's surprise, Jerious Norwood isn't playing. If he's listed as questionable again this week, I'm going to laugh out loud. Jason Snelling is still a bit of a question mark.
  
• Oh, heavens to Betsy, Harvey Dahl and Tyson Clabo are physical players! I hope Albert Haynesworth doesn't get the vapors from their rudeness. That would be horrid!
  
  Seriously, though, it's just before the game trash talk. Nobody likes the way Big Mean and Clabo play the game of football, but it sure as hell works. Haynesworth will be a guy to watch this weekend, because he's still a force to be reckoned with.
• Here's kind of an unofficial keys to the game list for the Redskins, courtesy of Hogs Haven. The likeliest might be that Fred Davis, who is taking over for injured tight end Chris Cooley, will blow up. The Falcons will have to keep an eye on him.
• This Matt Ryan thing is getting out of hand. He's been far from perfect this season and I'd like to see him make better throws, but I'm not exactly worried about his future in the league because of a middling half-season. It's really too bad that we've all gotten into the habit of expecting instant results and changing our minds on the fly (myself included), because we all end up yo-yoing on some of these guys.
  

Some years even your depth can't escape the dreaded injury bug.

That's right, folks, that cursed little bastard has dug his plague-encrusted fangs into Jamaal Fudge, knocking everybody's favorite backup safety out for the rest of the season. This is especially unusual because the team never disclosed what happened to Fudge, who had mostly played his time out on special teams in 2009. We wish him well.

His replacement is kind of an intriguing guy, or at least he would be if he wasn't doomed to spend the rest of the season warming the bench. Charlie Peprah was an effective special teamer for the Green Bay Packers, jarring two fumbles loose in 2007 and generating 37 total tackles during his three years there, and he could be a valuable piece of our kickoff return coverage team. If nothing else, his name will be fun to say for the rest of the season. Peprah peprah peprah.

In the big scheme of things, this is a blip on the back of an atom zipping its way through the universe, but it does illustrate just how heavily we've been hit by injuries this season. Let's hope Fudge is the end of it.

Thoughts?

I believed.

At various points in last night's game against the Saints, I really believed the Falcons were going to roar back and win it. All the signs were there. The defense was buckling down. The offense was moving efficiently. We looked nigh invincible some drives. It was a beautiful thing.

And then, as Chinua Achebe wrote, things fall apart.

It was a real gut punch of a game in that way. We weren't widely expected to be able to hang with the Saints, perhaps the league's toughest team, and yet that's exactly what the Falcons did. Losing a close game against a division rival is rough enough, but this loss may also have squashed our hopes of winning the division. I'm getting bummed out just typing that.

Still, as many of you pointed out, there's so many things we can take pride in after Monday. Not just that we kept the score close, but that we picked Drew Brees, managed a respectable defensive effort and finally unleashed Michael Turner. The fact that we played them so well that a win at the Georgia Dome in a few weeks suddenly seems eminently possible. The realization that we can hang in there with the very best is a comforting one as we continue our hunt for a playoff spot, and it's enough to make those losses against the Patriots and Cowboys sting a bit less. This is still a mighty interesting season, and I for one am looking forward to seeing how it plays out.

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More photos » by Ryan Moore - AP

Moments like these were hard to watch. (AP Photo/The Clarion-Ledger, Ryan Moore)

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I really wanted to win this game, but if we were going to lose, at least we did it with a ton of dignity.

Coming in as heavy underdogs, the Falcons stepped up in a big way and almost delivered a win time and time again. This proved that we aren't one of the league's elite teams, for those who didn't know that already. It also proved that we are a damn good, damn tough team who can hang with anybody in the league, and that has a lot of value as well. It's just going to take a little bit to get past the fact that we really did have it in our grasp. Bah.

Either way, we're sitting at 4-3, with the divisional race pretty much gone and the wild card race heating up. There are a lot of crucial games coming up, so cross your fingers and let's continue this journey together. Use this thread to discuss anything you feel like.

Usually I'd do some bullet-point thoughts here, but I'm a little drained tonight. Check back in the morning for the recap.

More photos » by Bill Haber - AP

The face of evil! (AP Photo/Bill Haber)

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In the immortal final words of the guy standing in the middle of the Tunguska event, this is going to be a big one.

Pretty much everyone thinks the Saints are going to win this game. Nostradamus predicted it years ago. The Mayan calendar ends with the inscrutable phrase "Saints by 10." Even the holiest of holies has issued a papal bull that states that the Saints will crush our beloved Falcons like Yahweh did the Egyptians. In short, no one really believes in us.

This would be a good time for me to give you a pep talk, but frankly this is the single most terrifying game on the schedule. I'm going in with my expectations firmly lowered, so that everything up to and including a victory will cause me to throw a one man party in my office. Some may accuse me of being negative or a non-believer or your term of choice—and I'm not totally going to dispute that—but it's also unrealistic to expect us to win every game on the schedule. With the New York Giants backsliding into oblivion, it's pretty obvious that the Saints stand between us and everything we desire. Unfortunately for us, they're pretty damn good.

In order to stop them, we'll have to put forth a balanced defensive effort that follows that lovely bend and don't break philosophy that we've been practicing for a long time. Keeping the Saints to field goals and getting a couple of timely turnovers could absolutely make this a winnable one, so long as our offense isn't gaining six yards and punting every time out. I'm confident we can do it. I'm just not confident we will do it.

Snap into the links with me, dudes and dudettes.

• Woo! Get pumped!
• Injuries could be a huge factor here, as J. Mike notes. If Jason Snelling is out, that leaves us with Michael Turner, Aaron Stecker and Verron Haynes. That's not great, honestly. There's a lot of questionables on the list in general, but I expect most everyone to play. Snelling really is the wildcard.
• One of the things I truly enjoy about the Saints-Falcons rivalry is how generally civil it is. That doesn't mean it's not a good one, of course. If either team had any sustained success, it might be a more recognized one. With the Falcons drawing national headlines last year and again this season and the Saints dominating, it's bound to attract more attention. That probably also means more angry people. Yay.
• The mere mention of a sophomore slump for Ryan is enough to make me grind my teeth. There are some causes for concern, certainly, but Ryan's numbers through six games this season are actually better than in 2008. Why are we supposed to be concerned about this again? And I really don't want to hear that Ryan's doomed and we made the wrong choice and OH NO! He's a kid in his second year in the league and he's already had one of the best seasons ever by a Falcons quarterback. Time to relax.
• Matchup of the week? The two secondaries versus the two aerial attacks. Drew Brees is just plain scary right now, and it helps that he has a wealth of receiving options against a secondary that's banged up and struggling. On the other side of the field, the Saints have improved and have Darren Sharper, who can jump a route or two. They'll have to contend with Roddy White, Tony Gonzalez and Michael Jenkins, though, which is still reasonably fearsome. Whoever wins it through the air will win it all.
  
• Saints fans don't fear the reaper, but they do fear Gonzo. Go figure.

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Surely this is the week that our beloved Falcons and their insane streak of awesome in the red zone comes to an end, right? No, no it's not. And don't call me Shirley.

The Falcons only made it into the red zone twice against the Cowboys, but once again they scored both times. One was a short Matt Ryan pass to Roddy White on a third down, while the other was a short Michael Turner run on first down. That bumps our conversion rate up even further, hovering right around 95%. It's truly astonishing how well this team does in short yardage, and I'm amazed week after week by their consistency there.

Not to beat a dead horse with a stone that I'm squeezing but there's no blood coming out, but this really highlights why the Falcons need to do better in between the 20's. It also makes me wonder—because I am not an answer machine, somehow—why we can't march down the field with the same ease with which we can score at that range. Perhaps if we treated the entire field as ten to twenty yard blocks? Who knows.

Your thoughts?

UPDATE: Per Tom Curran's Twitter account, William Moore is out for the year. Tip of the Falcoholic cap to maddosc for delivering this terrible, horrible, no good news.

Recognizing the issues rampant in their running back depth chart, the Falcons busted a move.

Aaron Stecker is very familiar with the Saints, which no doubt was a driving force behind getting him signed prior to the this game. He's also a decent back with some special teams value, so he could get a little playing time right away. His biggest aid to this team will be planning for Nawlins, though, so don't expect him to ride up on a white stallion and save us from our ground games woes.

In related news, it sounds like the coaching staff is considering getting Jason Snelling more touches in the weeks ahead:

"Well, if he continues to run the ball like that, yes," [Coach Mike] Smith said. "He ran the ball very effectively.

"He's a guy who has come in and played fullback for us and the tailback position as well and Jason, every time he has gotten an opportunity, he has played very efficiently. He could warrant more touches."

I'll be interested to see if anything comes of this and how significant the bump in carries would be, but there are clearly changes afoot. Hopefully the biggest change we see against the Saints is Michael Turner blowing past 100 yards on five carries, but any improvements would make me pretty happy right about now.

More photos » by Donna McWilliam - AP

The agony of defeat. (AP Photo/Donna McWilliam)

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Much will be made of this loss to the Dallas Cowboys.

Already, many of us are wondering what's wrong with Michael Turner. There's a lot of hand-wringing going on about whether our rosy expectations were way off. The optimism—nay, the swagger—that marked the week leading up to the Cowboys game has evaporated like water on a skillet. It seems many are wondering how the bottom could have dropped out so swiftly?

Look under your feet, my friends. We're still a 4-2 football team. Both of our losses have been bad ones, no doubt. Yet we've also fought tooth and nail for four wins, and we're most certainly not driving a Flintstones car at this point. I'm as concerned about our two losses this season as anybody, but let's not pretend they're anything more than two bad games. If this becomes a consistent trend, I'll be the first lemming in the water, and you'll all be welcome to join me. But it's just too early to give up hope when we have a winning record. Let's keep that in sight.

Besides, the game against the Saints should be occupying all of our thoughts at this point. Let's jump like we mean it and break this down.

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