Falcons are on the clock to fix disconnect between Desmond Ridder, Arthur Smith

FLOWERY BRANCH, Ga. – Desmond Ridder was the picture of NFL growing pains as he talked about turning the page on a disastrous ending last weekend while, well, looking ahead to a chance to make a claim on first place.

Ridder, the green Atlanta Falcons quarterback, is coming off the first three-interception game of his young NFL career. That left a lot of explaining for his media session before Wednesday’s practice.

"You try to obviously learn from the mistakes that were made … but you don’t dwell on those interceptions," said Ridder, whose next chance to make amends comes on Sunday at Tampa Bay (3-2) in a matchup that will determine the lead in the NFC South.

Survive long enough as an NFL quarterback and there will be weeks like this. Heat like this, with hot-take analysts suggesting the quarterback take a seat on the bench. The Falcons (3-3) lost an eight-point game against Washington after two of their final three drives ended with picks by the second-year quarterback. The other possession was rather ugly, too; the ball was turned over on downs that included a sack and two incompletions.

Talking turnovers, Ridder, 24, insisted there wasn’t a connecting thread. Was it accuracy or the play design? Bad decisions or bad routes?

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"There were a couple things on each, where I could’ve made a better read, we could’ve ran a better route, or miscommunication," he said. "Or all three. So, there’s little parts in that entire game – not only with myself but with the whole offense. It’s got to be all 11 guys working on the same page."

In rolling with a young quarterback, the Falcons knew there would be some turbulence along the way with this learning curve. Ridder is surrounded by a strong cast of supporting weapons including first-round picks Bijan Robinson, Kyle Pitts and Drake London. And the defense has improved, allowing them to stay in games.

Yet as natural as it is for the quarterback to attract scrutiny, the crunch-time meltdown on Sunday – which included glaring clock management issues on top of the picks – wasn’t all on Ridder. Arthur Smith, the Falcons coach and play-caller, has fingerprints on this, too.

The Falcons’ operational process during the final minutes was a mess. On at least three occasions, the play-clock nearly ran out as Ridder prepared to call for the snaps. Atlanta probably uses as many personnel packages as any team in the league, which can help create matchup advantages but also requires frequent substitutions. And the unit uses an extensive amount of pre-snap motion, which can also chew up time.

In any event, this stuck out as the issues piled up on Sunday. During one sequence, the flow was so sloppy that after Ridder spiked the football to kill the clock, the Falcons still had to use a timeout as the 25-second play-clock was about to expire.

Asked about the operational issues, Smith fired back with arithmetic.

"Two-thousand plays the last two years," Smith said. "Things happen. They are all different. I wouldn’t call that some catastrophic trend. Now they shouldn’t happen. But they’re all different, why they happened. You identify the problem. But you take three plays out of 2,360…"

But still. It’s what happened lately. The mishaps on Sunday came with the game on the line.

"We can play this game all day," defended Smith, in his third season at the helm. "What about Houston? What about New York?"

In Week 5, the Falcons used a 10-play, 56-yard drive to beat the Texans 21-19 with a Younghoe Koo field goal as time expired. In Week 2 against the Green Bay Packers, they executed a 12-play, 66-yard drive for Koo’s game-winning field goal with just under a minute on the clock. The New York game referenced was Smith’s first victory as Falcons coach, in Week 3 in 2021, when his team beat the Giants as then-quarterback Matt Ryan directed a seven-play, 56-yard drive that culminated with a Koo field goal as time expired.

"We’ve won a lot of games handling those situations," Smith added. "Obviously, we didn’t do it last week. We’ve got to get it fixed. This isn’t a trend, a runaway story. Acknowledge what happened. Fix it…Those things happened. That’s not the only reason we lost the game."

Smith pointed to the turnovers, maintaining that NFL teams this season have won just 6% of the games when committing three turnovers.

"Go back to Houston, and those guys executed pretty damn good," Smith said.

Ridder didn’t dispute the mishaps with the operational flow, which typically include the process of getting the play-call from the sideline in addition to the substitutions. Ryan, the previous quarterback, was sometimes frustrated with the process during his one season working with Smith. Now Ridder, while not pointing a finger at his coach, is dealing with similar issues.

He summed it up as a matter of paying better attention to detail, yet he also acknowledged the challenges with communication….especially as the play-clock winds down.

"It makes you speed things up faster," Ridder said. "That’s something we don’t want to do. It goes back to communication. Everybody knowing where they’re supposed to be…just the details with those plays."

Two of Ridder’s teammates, Pitts and London, commended their quarterback for keeping a calm demeanor amid the late-game chaos.

"He’s even-keeled," Pitts said. "When stuff is getting out of control, that’s not when you want to crumble. He’s good at keeping his composure."

Now Ridder – and the rest of his unit – will have to prove capable of growing from the hard lessons.