The Falcons lost to the Giants 31-10. That's actually the best way to describe the game, sadly. The team has rapidly become less than the sum of its parts, and I'm a little annoyed that we're going to enter open season on Joey Harrington after this one. It's hard for me to find something positive to take out of this loss, and I hate writing about how much the Falcons suck on a weekly basis.
So I'll make this brief and to the point. The defense authored some big plays and DeAngelo Hall was pretty monstrous today, which is nice. This time they allowed over 100 yards rushing, though, and allowed Eli Manning to pass his merry way down the field. Still, I have to look at the defense as a bright spot this season. Mike Zimmer deserves a lot of credit for squeezing a lot of talent out of this unit despite a couple of glaring holes (one of them is named Lewis Sanders). Despite the bad game, the defense has earned itself a get out of bitching free card.
The offense has neither earned nor deserves that much credit. Joey was pretty awful again but was also sacked four times and pressured constantly. I'm not here to bury Joey Joe Joe, who in my mind still hasn't ceded control of the starting job to Byron Leftwich. The biggest failure in this game was once again the running game, with Dunn getting only 15 yards on 8 carries (pathetic) and the team running Norwood only 6 times despite his 87 yards. Yes, one of those carries went for 67 yards, but that's exactly why you give him more carries. The dude's a threat to break off massive runs like that, and when Dunn is clearly ineffective and you're only down by 7 you really need to be running. Insane.
1-5. What a disappointing record. [EDIT] Further evidence that I shouldn't be blogging when I'm angry and tired. Your numbers confuse me!