My Post-Playoff Overreaction by Terence Moore

There is nothing like the playoffs to inspire irrational sports journalism, especially for a writer whose hometown team has just lost. And, if I may torture a metaphor sportswriter style, the NFL playoffs are like the Hanukkah of irrational sports journalism – days of the same piece written about each team that loses.

I love this time of year.

There is a formula for playoff loss analysis pieces: forget for a second that the NFL playoffs are among the greatest of small sample size crapshoots and that there are circumstances mitigating the loss, just make a big deal about how the players are not playoff ready/clutch enough, make sure you meet your word count, call it a day.

And Terence Moore of the Atlanta Journal Constitution is fantastically formulaic:

Falcons need more playoff-type players

Because the regular season-type players who were good enough to get the Falcons into the playoffs immediately became crappy in the playoffs. I hate when that happens. I call it A-Rod Disease.

Just because you soared or slid from the regular season into the playoffs, that doesn’t mean you’re a playoff team.

Actually, that is exactly what it means.

Ask the 2008 Falcons.

Me: Hello, Atlanta Falcons?
Falcons: Hello.
Me: Hi! This is Nils Nilsson and I am sorry to bother you but I just wanted to confirm that by winning enough games to qualify for the playoffs you actually became a playoff team.
Falcons: Who is this?
Me: My name is Nils. Just need confirmation - were you a playoff team?
Falcons: We were a football team playing in the playoffs, so yes, we were a playoff team.
Me: Yes, but you lost in the first round.
Falcons: But we played in the playoffs. You asked if we were a playoff team.
Me: That sounds altogether too logical. I think that I am going to ask writer Terence Moore to further define what playoff team really means. Thanks for your time and, by the way, good job losing to the Cardinals yesterday. That has gotta hurt.
Falcons: It does.

Better yet, ask Steve Wallace, the former San Francisco 49ers offensive tackle with three world championship rings.

Better yet, I’ll ask Steve Wallace.

Said Wallace, combining his 49ers past with the Falcons’ present and future, “To win Super Bowls, you have to have those guys that will be playmakers — those guys that won’t sit back and watch somebody catch a ball in front of them. That won’t sit back and make a half-hearted effort at pushing a guy out of bounds. That always will have the mind set that this particular moment in a playoff game could be the difference in the game.”

This is why sportswriters exist. Before Terence got his killer interview with Steve and cracked the big egg of knowledge all over my head, I never knew that not letting other players catch a ball in front of you, not sitting back and not making half-hearted efforts were playoff-type player specific skills. I thought that they were more general skills. Skills that could be the difference between a good player and an average one. Silly me.

To hear Wallace tell it, the Falcons don’t have enough of those players.

That’s because they don’t.

The Falcons went 11-5. With a rookie coach. And a rookie quarterback. They lost in Arizona by less than a touchdown to a team playing in front of energized fans who had never seen a home playoff game. Even if you blame sub-par players, there have been worse losses.

Wallace watched it all. Then again, he hadn’t a choice. The Falcons are deep inside his still solid frame of 6-foot-5 and 280-something pounds. He’s an Atlanta native who lives in Buckhead, where he remains so enthralled with the hometown team that he rarely has missed a millisecond of its games since his retirement as an NFL player 12 years ago. “You know how much of a diehard Falcons fan I am?” said Wallace, 44, who graduated from Chamblee High School along the way to Auburn. “As a kid, they were always blacked out locally, so I was glued to the radio listening to Bob Neal and Harmon Wages.”

When sportswriting goes bad:

1. “Wallace watched it all…he had no choice.” Why? Because he is an Atlanta native who lives in Buckhead. Air tight logic.

2. “He rarely has missed a millisecond of [Falcons] games since his retirement…12 years ago.” How? Dude has a bladder of steel, never blinks and watches games in a sensory deprivation chamber.

3. “You know how much of a diehard fan [he is]? He listened to the Falcons on the radio.” And…that is what passes for diehard in Atlanta.

Wallace laughed. Then he sighed…

Then he hugged Terence. In his big beefy diehard arms. It was weird.

There were numerous gaffes by Falcons linebackers and defensive backs.

Bummer. But with a single game sample size, it’s hard to indict an 11-5 team.

Star defensive end John Abraham and his aching thigh finished with just two tackles and no sacks.

Especially when a star player was injured.

So this isn’t surprising: More than half of those on the Falcons’ roster on Saturday hadn’t been in a playoff game before.

Yet another reason why this loss may not be because of non playoff-type players, but rather something that could be put down to other factors. Just saying.

Said Wallace, who went to the playoffs every year during his decade with the 49ers. “You walk into the stadium, and you can barely hear yourself talk. It can pretty much handicap your offense if you’re not ready, and the Falcons weren’t ready.

They would have been ready, however, if they had playoff-type players. Because playoff-type players don’t need a game plan or intense tactical preparation or anything like that. They shit on stuff like that. Then they go out and make a full-hearted effort at pushing a guy out of bounds and their team wins the game.

That’s how football is played!

“You could see early in the game where their offensive line wasn’t even putting a hand on guys. The crowd noise was bothering them and the whole team. After a while, you could tell that (offensive coordinator) Mike Mularkey made some adjustments.”

Mularkey bought the O-Line those Bose sound-cancelling headphones.

It was too late then.

He had missed the post-Christmas sale, shipping was a total rip-off and FedEx doesn’t guarantee before-game delivery for items that are ordered during the game. It was a mess.

Maybe next year, but the Falcons have to get those playmakers first.
Because the current young team that went 11-5 and lost a game by a touchdown despite having at least one key injury, playing away, and struggling without their Bose sound-cancelling headphone is total crap.

Logic. Fail.