I watched the game last night. The Atlanta Falcons played the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Atlanta celebrated their former quarterback Matt Ryan and inducted him into their ring of honor. He spoke to the crowd at halftime when his old team was trailing by seven.
But the second half told a different story. Just when I thought the Buccaneers were about to jump to a commanding lead, the Falcons came back somehow. I was sort of watching the game while scrolling through my phone. Not that offense bores me, but it gets too monotonous to see no defense. In the second half, both teams kept scoring. I like a little defense to add suspense.
Anyway, with around two minutes left, the Falcons were down 30-27 when their quarterback, Kirk Cousins, threw an interception to Buccaneers linebacker Devin White to seal the game, or so I thought. All the Buccaneers had to do to leave with the victory was drain the clock and force Atlanta to call all their timeouts.
On a third down, after the Buccaneers quarterback Baker Mayfield handed the ball off to his running back, there was a penalty against Tampa Bay that pushed them out of field goal range. With around a minute left, they had to punt on fourth down back to the Falcons, all because the referees completely missed a facemask penalty from one of the Falcons defenders that would’ve caused an automatic first down for the Buccaneers. All the Bucs would’ve had to do was kneel a few times until the clock turned to zero.
What ended up happening was Kirk Cousins received the ball again and had one more shot to tie the game, and that was exactly what he did after he marched his team to midfield. A strike to wide receiver Drake London put them in field goal range. With no timeouts, the offense rushed to the line of scrimmage and was able to spike the ball with only a second remaining.
But the kicking team wasted too much time to set up and suffered a delay of game penalty, which shoved them back five yards, making the field goal attempt harder. It was payback after getting away with the facemask penalty. Yet and still, Younghoe Koo booted the ball between the uprights and tied the game at 30. They went to overtime.
On the coin flip, Baker Mayfield called for tails, but it was heads. As you would’ve imagined, the Falcons defender elected to receive. So with all the momentum, Kirk Cousins marched his offense down the field again. Right after a big gain, receiver Drake London got hurt from a collision and had to be pulled out of the game. A backup with the last name of Hodge (I didn’t know his first name) so far had only one reception. On the very next play, Cousins, with his record-breaking five hundred-plus yards in the air, connected with Hodge down the middle. It was a simple ten-yard route. Hodge shook off his defender and jetted to the endzone. No one on that porous Buccaneers defense could catch up with him, so he scored the game-winning touchdown. The Falcons had come back and won, 36-30.
The teammates jumped all over Hodge and celebrated behind the endzone. In only the fifth week of the season, it was like they’d already won their Super Bowl. And in the locker room, they sprayed each other with what appeared to be champagne. It was like they were the Yankees after winning Game 7 of the MLB World Series. I believe it’s never a good sign for a team to celebrate this early when so much more football meeds to be played. It makes me worry about the Falcons. Will they be as competitive down the stretch? Something tells me no.