Falcons must ‘regroup’ after another woeful performance

The Falcons are too deep into the season to keep having procedural penalties. But left tackle Jake Matthews and center Ryan Neuzil each had false starts.

On defense, Leonard Floyd had a face mask penalty. Mike Hughes and A.J. Terrell were called for pass interference.

The special teams even had three penalties to help the Dolphins’ upset effort.

“We definitely have to correct the physical mistakes that we made,” Morris said. “We have to correct those mistakes. We have to be up front and honest, which we will be.”

After the Falcons posted a big road win at Minnesota in Week 2, they went to Carolina and lost 30-0 to a previously winless Panthers team. The Falcons bounced back and beat Washington and Buffalo. The Falcons played the 49ers tough in a game that was 13-10 in the fourth quarter.

But they elected to take the Dolphins lightly and got smacked down.

“Not surprised,” Morris said. “This is the National Football League. If you don’t come ready to play. Clearly, we were not (ready to play) today. These things could happen.”

Falcons left guard Chris Lindstrom believes the team can move on from this bad loss.

“The connection is the bedrock of our team,” Lindstrom said. “That never fails. It’s constant belief in one another. That’s what makes the highs so high. The losses are frustrating, but we have that belief and connection with one another and knowing that we can get it right.”

The Falcons didn’t want to give the Dolphins too much credit for their victory.

“I think it was ourselves,” Lindstrom said. “I’ll start with myself and my unit. Not good enough.”

The Falcons gave up 174 yards rushing against the 49ers. The Dolphins came in with the same game plan. Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel was the offensive coordinator under Kyle Shanahan before getting the Dolphins job.

“They came up with a very similar game plan,” Falcons linebacker Kaden Elliss said. “They ran the ball with a lot of different variety in the run game. A bunch of different runs (that) they hit us with, gap scheme, inside zone, all of the different runs. Then marrying some good play-action shots down the field.

“Typically, second-and-long, third-and-long is a lot of passes. But they ran the ball just like San Francisco did and they were able to get first downs.”

The Falcons were without linebacker Divine Deablo, outside linebacker Jalon Walker and nickelback Billy Bowman Jr. JD Bertrand, who played at Blessed Trinity and Notre Dame, got his first NFL start. He finished with nine tackles.

Elliss led the way for the defense with 12 tackles.

“That one is tough to swallow,” Elliss said. “We have to swallow it as a group. It happened. Let’s go watch the film. We are going to see a lot of things we don’t like. We just have to find a way to bounce back.”

Elliss believes the team can rebound.

“It doesn’t change even though this is frustrating,” Elliss said. “It’s still focusing on your individual process. Your individual work. What you have to do collectively and come together and do something special. You can’t change your process individually and collectively.”

The Falcons secondary had a rough day, too.

“You have to move on and play the next week,” Terrell said. “You can’t let things hang over and go into the next week. That’s just the mindset you have to have, and everybody has to from the players to the staff. We just have to fix our mindset and what we come and do throughout the week. When we come to games, we have to bring our own energy and just play to our standard.”

How the Falcons didn’t show up with enough energy is bizarre.

“It’s the NFL,” Terrell said. “You have to respect all of your opponents. As we all know, the league, there are a lot of one-possession games, and that’s what they come down to. So, we didn’t look at Miami that way about the record, none of that type of stuff. It’s not college football, but you just have to come in and just play our style of ball and get things done early.”

There was a bottom line to this loss.

“We got rocked,” Elliss said.