Football Function
Buccaneers vs Falcons Recap
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Open your free iHeart app and search Amazing Wildlife and start listening. What's going on everybody? Guys and girls, welcome back to another edition of the Football flagship podcast, a prime time edition, hosted by yours truly, Michael Ritter. You can find me on X and Michael Five Ritter or on Instagram and Michael Ritter five. Usually these shows are hosted by our buddy Goose, who does a great job with the prime time edition, covering the Thursday night, Sunday night and Monday night football games for the entirety of the regular season. But because he's in Las Vegas right now, spending some time with his family, we are going to cover what he is not able to cover here and luckily, it just will happen to be a Falcons Thursday night football game and I feel like I had no problem hopping on here and doing what I can talking about this game because it was a barn burner. Absolute thriller of a football game. It's been so long since the Falcons have been in a situation like this, early in the season prime time with actual stakes. You know, I mean, obviously late in the year if your entire division is bad. Those games mean a lot because you can still sneak into the playoffs, but in a wide open NFC, it just feels like this game meant more because the Falcons and the Buccaneers have an opportunity to both be big time players when you look at the, you know, the big picture of the NFC, especially as we creep into October in November where Kirk Cousins tends to play his best football. So this was a meaningful win because had we lost this game, had the Falcons not beaten the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, we would have fallen to two and three, but more importantly, two games behind the Buccaneers who would have been four and one if they would have won this game. Now we're tied both with a three and two record and the kicker here is the fact that these two teams play each other in three weeks. The Falcons play the Panthers, the Seahawks and then the Buccaneers again. So it's going to be a very critical point in our schedule right now. Like we're entering a part in our schedule where we have to get wins. We just, you know, obviously beat the Saints. We've just beat the Bucks now. We have the Panthers and I just mentioned, you know, the Seahawks and the Bucks again. And the Saints are right after that. So we have so many divisional matchups coming up that had we gone on a slide, like had we started to lose some of these games? Obviously this was going to just be detrimental to our season. No matter how easy the schedule gets because I truly do believe that we've gone through the hard part of our schedule. I still, you know, in the back of my mind just feel like man, the Falcons still have to take care of business. Like they have to not take it lightly, not have that mentality that the schedule's getting easier because the last thing you want is for your team to fall off. Now I don't think that's going to happen with Kirk Cousins and his history of playing, you know, in specific months. Kirk Tober is a real thing. Like he's actually a way better quarterback in the month of October and November than he is in September. Now are we going to see that trend continue because his playoff history isn't necessarily something that you want to just get thrilled about. You know, you're not going to just sit there and say Kirk Cousins has a history of just taking his team deep and deep into the playoffs and getting the job done. But through the month of October, through the month of November, I think we're going to get some great Kirk Cousins football and it just so happens to align with where our schedule might get a little bit softer. And I feel like that's definitely going to be beneficial for us. But this game was anything but soft. I mean, it was a shoot out. There were so many different lead changes, so many different points in the game where it just shifted, momentum shifted, you know, from one side to the other. Early in the game, one of the Falcons starting cornerback. D offered left the game with a concussion and that brought in Antonio Hamilton and Antonio Hamilton proceeded to allow three touchdowns, which obviously some of that can be pointed to the fact that he's an outside cornerback and he was forced to come in and play in the nickel. That's not his comfort spot and you forced him to go up against a wide receiver like Mike Evans. Yeah, like Mike Evans is going to get his. That's what we talked about in the preview show. So I was not shocked. Mike Evans was able to score whenever we put a backup cornerback on him. And then you talk about the fact that the three touchdowns were given up pretty early in the game coming off of a week where the Falcons didn't score an offensive touchdown and say, man, are we going to be able to come back for this? Is this going to be insurmountable? Is this going to put us in a position where we just, we can't recover and withstand the blow that the Buccaneers gave us early in the game. And luckily that wasn't the case. The Falcons were able to put up one of their best offensive performances that I've seen in many, many years. Kurt Cousin, I mean, he threw for 509 yards. He broke Matt Ryan's single game passing record on the night that Matt Ryan was inducted into the ring of honor. And I know that's a lot of people look at it like Matt Ryan's one of the most unlucky players in the NFL or in NFL history. That seems like something like that would happen to him. But I guarantee he was rooting for something like that. I mean, maybe he wouldn't have wanted his record to get broken. But as the Falcons and the Bucks were just in that shootout and every single one of Kurt Cousin's 509 yards mattered to get this win, that's whenever you kind of look at it from a perspective that Matt Ryan probably didn't care. Like his record was being broken. He wanted the Falcons to get the win. However, it came, you know, by any means necessary. And in this case, Kurt Cousin's throwing for a monster game. He threw for 250 yards in the first half and then threw for 250 yards in the second half. He's the first quarterback to ever do that in NFL history. He's the first quarterback to ever throw for 450 yards for three different franchises. He had a monster game. He's proven that he is one of the elite quarterbacks in this league. And I just said it, yes, he's elite. He's coming off of a torn Achilles. And look at the clutch factor, man. Like the ball in his hands in prime time. This is a guy that takes his team down the field and makes the crucial plays. Everybody makes mistakes. Like every quarterback is going to have something if you watch the entirety of a football game and every single one of his throws, especially a night where Kurt Cousin threw like 54 times. 56 times, I don't even know how many it was, but he threw the ball a lot. And yeah, there was, you know, a bonehead interception that happened at Lavante David that actually ended up helping the Falcons because if the Falcons would have just thrown an incomplete pass there, instead of the interception, the Bucks would have had the ball with much better field position. Let's just say that. So everything kind of worked out well. The ball was bouncing the Falcons away, which doesn't really happen to them very often. So, you know, I'm not going to apologize for it when, you know, the fact that we're getting lucky, you know, lucky breaks now. It's not something that has gone our way in years past. So I'm not going to be, you know, shy about it. I'm not going to say here and say, man, you know, I wish we'd get the wins cleaner. You know, I wish that this was a nice, pretty victory. Or, you know, sometimes they say like an ugly win is worse than a pretty loss, depending on where you are in the season. Because an ugly win gives you that false confidence. Like it gives you a sense of complacency in a way. Depending on, you know, who your coach isn't coding staff and what your organization is like in general. But a tough win, or I guess a pretty win, gives you that motivation that you can build off of that. And it could lead to stringing multiple wins together where an ugly or an ugly win, I guess, can lead to, you know, you get completely blown out in the coming weeks. So I guess we'll see what happens with the Falcons. But the way that this game went down, clocking the ball, getting the young Waku in position to hit a game tying field goal to send it into overtime after he missed too early in the game. It seemed like he just wasn't having a great night. It wasn't one of his better performances, although he ended up showing out late in the game whenever he needed him. And that's what young Waku is all about. And then we get to overtime Falcons win the coin toss. And Cadero Hodge calls game. Drake London takes a pretty rough rib shot, knocks him out of the game. Literally the very next play, Cadero Hodge catches a slant with the ball inside. He breaks a tackle and uses a speed to break away with a walk off touchdown. Phenomenal game from this Falcons receiving core. We saw Kyle Pitts making appearance. We saw Drake London make a massive appearance. I think he had like 12 catches for 154 and a touchdown. Kyle Pitts had like 88 yards, 85 yards, something like that off of seven catches. The Falcons are 5 and 0 whenever Kyle Pitts has over 80 yards. Meaning get this dude the ball. Good things happen when you get him in the ball. You literally win games. So hopefully Zach Robinson has gotten in a spot as the coordinator and as the play caller for the Atlanta Falcons where now he knows how to use all these weapons. He's starting to get more comfortable in this situation with this personnel group. So yeah, let's see it start to lead to more wins, more offensive production, maybe some more balance because that's 509 yards is nice. But I'll take 300 and a 150 yard rushing game any day of the week. So let's get our running backs more involved. Let's get the running game going. But I think all that will kind of work itself out once our offensive line gets fully back to health. Caleb McGarry was back in this game, but coming off as an injury a short week, you could tell he wasn't 100% and we're still missing our starting center. So I think that once we get our offensive line back to full strength, maybe that will just lead to our running game being more successful, which leads to us having longer drives. And then you start just seeing the success rate of your offense just skyrocket a little bit. So an exciting win, 36 to 30 and over time, the Falcons now lead the NFC South at three and two. This tiebreaker with the Buccaneers is gonna be critical, there are two losses. The Falcons that is are to the Kansas City Chiefs and the Pittsburgh Steelers, two AFC teams. So you don't wanna lose any games, but if you do lose any games, you want them to be games where you could look back and say, "Man, we could have won that game, it's a one possession game." And you want them to go against teams that are on a completely different conference because it's not going to hurt you in the playoff picture in the grand scheme of things unless they start to stack up and you end up with six or seven out of conference losses and then it just messes your record up completely and you have nobody to blame but yourself. But that is going to do it for me here, guys. Thank you so much for bearing with me on this episode. Can't wait to get goose back to cover the primetime games, the rest of the primetime games in the week five slate. Terry and I will be back with Howard Poole to cover the week five slate all the Sunday games and then obviously Grim Reaper is going to be doing his thing. Grim Rangers is going to come out the week five edition, that's going to drop Sunday for the regular listeners and then for the Patreon subscribers, that's going to drop with this episode on Saturday. So a day early, you're gonna get that betting and gambling advice so just one more perk to subscribe over there on Patreon. We'll definitely appreciate it with all that being said, guys, have a damn good weekend, enjoy your football, walk passionately in the direction of your dreams and we'll talk to you soon. (whooshing) How to have fun anytime, anywhere. Step one, go to ChumbaCasino.com. ChumbaCasino.com, got it. Step two, collect your welcome bonus. Come to Papa, welcome bonus. Step three, play hundreds of casino style games for free. That's a lot of games, all for free. Step four, unleash your excitement. Whoo hoo! ChumbaCasino has been delivering thrills for over a decade, so claim your free welcome bonus now and live the Chumba life. Visit ChumbaCasino.com. E-T-W Group, no purchases are employed or prohibited by law. See terms and conditions, 18 plus. Ever wonder what makes Panda so special? Join us on Amazing Wildlife to find out. Giant pandas and their habitat are unique and beautiful and extraordinary representation of the natural world. And if you get that opportunity to sit and watch a Panda eat bamboo, you will be mesmerized. Listen to Amazing Wildlife on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Open your free iHeart app and search Amazing Wildlife and start listening.