The Falcons locker room was rather quiet following Sunday's 25-14 loss. Falcons head coach Mike Smith spoke about the uncharacteristic aspects of his team's play, Matt Ryan commented on his interception near the end of the game and linebacker Curtis Lofton shared that their defense was able to do as it planned for much of the game. In the end, however, things went wrong and the Falcons found themselves down and eventually out.
Following the game, Smith called the penalties and mistakes of his team "uncharacteristic" and told his players they wouldn't have much time to dwell on things with a division opponent next on the schedule: "I told our team in there after the ball game that there's still a lot of football left to be played. We need to make sure we get in there and get the things that we need to improve, and get fixed what we need to get fixed. We'll start doing that on Monday as quickly as possible because we have a division opponent coming in with the Carolina Panthers." *
Matt Ryan's interception on a pass to Tony Gonzalez helped end the game for Atlanta. Ryan said he's got to take that mistake and continue to learn: "I didn't really see it, I was on the ground but it was probably a little too high. I just have got to make a better throw in those situations but that's part of the deal. That's part of the game. The ball is going to bounce into their arms sometimes. You've got to get yourself right back up, keep yourself going week in and week out and that's what I'm going to do." *
Running back Jason Snelling returned to action this week and found himself involved on offense, rushing once and catching two passes for 21 yards. He said he felt Green Bay did what they expected but some of the penalties made things to challenging after a while: "Everything we practiced all week, they did. For the most part, we were able to pick it up. We had a couple of mistakes that cost us and we couldn't recover from it." *
Atlanta knew Green Bay would total up yards against them, but they hoped to limit the big plays from Rodgers and his receivers. Linebacker Curtis Lofton said for much of the game they were able to accomplish their mission, they just couldn't hang on in the end: "The thing that we wanted them to do was to drive down the field. We didn't want to give up big shots when they did get touchdowns. That's exactly what we wanted to do. We did it. They just made the plays to win the game and we didn't." *
After making Aaron Rodgers look beatable in the first half, the Falcons couldn't do the same in the second and allowed him to get his team back in the game. Linebacker Sean Weatherspoon had a great game and said after the game it was tough to swing the emotive pendulum from shut down defense to give up scores in the blink of an eye: "It's tough. You can be up one second and down the next. What we have to do as a unit, we have to play every play. We have to make sure we're executing and doing our job. That's something he got us on tonight. The guy is a great quarterback, everybody knows it. We got a hot start but we didn't play four quarters. What we want to do is learn from that."
