Finding the root of Falcons issues in loss to Los Angeles Chargers 

By the time both teams were heading to the locker room for halftime, the narrative of the game had flipped on its head.

For as productive as the Falcons were in the first quarter, that became the Chargers in the second. In fact, the Falcons had -5 total yards in the second quarter (yes, negative five). Meanwhile, the Chargers came charging back with a 166-yard performance in that quarter, taking the 14-10 lead into halftime.

This is the ebb and flow Smith and players were referring to. The way Smith described it after the game, though, displayed how he felt like this pattern happened through the game’s entirety, not just in the first half.

“This game right here, there’s an ebb and flow,” Smith said. “First quarter,” his arm goes up, “second quarter,” his arm motions downward, “third quarter,” arm goes up again, “and then down the stretch,” down again. “They made one more play than we did and that was the difference in the game.”

However, I don’t think I agree with that. I’d argue it wasn’t that the Chargers made just one more play in the game than the Falcons did. It wasn’t one play that made the difference in the game, and players said so in the locker room. It was the accumulation of the plays that ebbed. That was the difference. There were a handful of plays to point to, and the game essentially boiled down to the Falcons not making a multitude of plays on offense, defense and special teams.

For every play you can point to that may or may not have won the Chargers the game, you could point to a handful of others that lost the Falcons the game. Twitter will tell you it was Ta’Quon Graham’s fumble-from-a-fumble-recovery in the final minute of the game that lost the Falcons the game.

And while, yes, he shouldn’t have fumbled the ball, the offense shouldn’t have gone three-and-out when they got the ball back with a little over five minutes to go in the game…

… and the defense shouldn’t have allowed the Chargers to convert all but three of their third downs in the second and fourth quarter combined…

And what happened of the three they didn’t convert you may be asking? One ended in a fourth and five that the Chargers did convert. One ended on a field goal that tied the game. And the final one ended on a stop, a fumble that Graham picked up and fumbled at midfield. All three were actually very productive for the Chargers in a different way.

If you’re asking me, that’s the difference in the game, right? These very specific third down situations. I’ll stand by…