Scratch that
As a journalist, part of the job that no one ever really talks about is that you have to go into every game day being content in the fact that some of your best work will never see the light of day. That’s the case with every note I made from the first quarter to the third. I could go through and note them all for you: How pleased I was with the way the offense was operating, how surprised I was when I saw Tyler Allgeier was inactive, how taken aback I was when the Falcons defense sacked Jameis Winston not once… not twice… but four times after having 17 total sacks in all of 2021. This list goes on…
I was going to give you poetry (POETRY I TELL YOU!) after the game if the first three quarters of play held. Truly I was. But you’re never going to see that because 1) I highly doubt you want to, the sting it still fresh and 2) What does any of it matter if there was no finish?
That’s a thought I pondered in the last 12-14 hours since we saw the Saints mount a fourth quarter, 17-point comeback. Does the first three quarters of what we saw matter if the Falcons lost? At first, I thought no, it doesn’t. But the more I thought about it the more I felt like it has to matter.
For the sake of the fan base and the future of the organization at large, it has to matter that we actively saw a different team on Sunday. Yes, the outcome felt way too similar and we can’t have the first three quarters without the final one, but the same goes the other way, too. We can’t take the final quarter without the first three.
After the game I asked Marcus Mariota how you go into a Monday breaking down this game: Do you separate it in your mind to ease the sting of the fourth quarter? Or do you look at the entirety? He said – without hesitation – that it’s the latter.
“I take it as a whole because I do think there was missed opportunities throughout the entire course of the game. And it’s part of week one, right? You kind of iron some things out,” Mariota said. “This is the full first game that we got to play together. With that being said, I’m not going to look at it specifically, you know, one quarter or another. I really believe if you look at it as a whole, there’s ways that we can improve and find ways to score more points and hopefully win the game.”
I wrote, “Scratch that,” when New Orleans began the fourth quarter with a four-play, touchdown-scoring drive. But I ended up not scratching anything out at all, because a game is four quarters, not one… even if…
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