Aaron Rodgers and Co. Expose Slew of Urgent Falcons Issues for Offseason

ATLANTA -- The Falcons will eventually watch film Sunday of their destruction at the hands of the Packers here Saturday night. They better not come away with the idea they simply played a bad game.

They might say that for public consumption, but the realists in camp will not debate. They played bad for a reason.

They have urgent issues that were apparent in the 48-21 rout.

• Aaron Rodgers thoroughly outplayed Matt Ryan, who made poor decisions on some throws and had no mobility to get out of a jam. One thing you might see in the offseason is a project to get Ryan on the move so he can slide from danger and keep plays alive.

• The Falcons need another situational pass rusher, someone off the edge or a fast linebacker who can get a quarterback like Rodgers on the ground. Atlanta whiffed over and over while trying to sack Rodgers and make him uncomfortable.

• It was obvious the Falcons missed cornerback Brian Williams, their nickel back. Christopher Owens, who is the sixth defensive back, was too small to deal with the Packers' receivers and some elements of the run game.

• They have to find out if cornerback Dominique Franks can play, just as they found out this season that safety William Moore could play. Franks was a fifth-round pick in 2010.

• Atlanta has to figure out where it is going to get a third wide receiver, a slot guy. Roddy White is an All-Pro and Michael Jenkins can catch the ball in traffic and is valuable in the run game with size and willingness to block.

The Falcons just didn't have enough trust in slot man Harry Douglas.

Coach Mike Smith stayed on the diplomatic side of his analysis in a press conference Sunday afternoon. As usual, there will be a careful look at what happened Saturday night, not a jump to conclusions.

"The sky is not falling I can assure you that," Smith said. "We played a very poor football game last night in terms of the performance. We coached a very poor football game. Everybody in that room has ownership of that and it starts with me. I don't think you want to overreact.

"You've got to take time. You sit back and you analyze and you go through that analysis and you make decisions in the calm after you've been able to take the emotion out of it. If you go on emotion right now, you're probably not going to like what you're thinking."

Smith said the changes to the Falcons will not include a shake up of his coaching staff.

"No, in fact we hope we can have continuity on our coaching staff," Smith said. "I think our coaching staff is one of the best or not the best in the NFL. I think that you want to have continuity with your players; you want to have continuity with your staff. I think our staff has done a great job this year preparing our team each and every week, even though there were a couple of games that we didn't play our best."

The Falcons' ego might get massaged if the Packers go into Chicago next week and win a spot in the Super Bowl.... or maybe not.

If the Packers lose to the Bears, the Falcons can say, "See, Green Bay is not a team and quarterback for the ages. We beat ourselves. They are just another team. They lost to the Bears."

Smith is standing by his team. He said they lost because they played poorly not because there are fundamental flaws with the operation. If the game was played 10 times, he could expect his team to win if it played to its potential.

"The first one is that we won 13 football games and ultimately that's how you're judged. I think that our scoring offense and scoring defense, which is the second most important thing, we were fifth in the League on offense and fifth in the League on defense," Smith said. "We wanted to control the clock in our time of possession, we were third in the League in time of possession. We wanted to be the least penalized team in the League, during the regular season we were the least penalized team in the League.

"We wanted to win the turnover margin and have it significantly in our favor, and we were third or fourth in the League. Now, those are the things that we did during the regular season that you can take as a positive. We need to now take that into the second season."