This was the primary talking point for head coach Kevin Stefanski after Sunday’s game, and for good reason. The Falcons turned the ball over on their first offensive play, and they finished with five giveaways against the Panthers.
“As you guys know, giveaways and takeaways are the key to this game,” Stefanski said. “To turn it over that many times, and obviously, we didn’t take away at all, there’s no way to win in the NFL like that. We’ll have to learn from it, and then we’ll have to get better from these experiences.”
Atlanta finished with a minus-five turnover margin on Sunday against the Panthers. Its first two drives ended with a fumble and an interception, respectively, allowing Carolina to quickly build a 10-0 lead by the end of the first quarter despite some good stands by the defense.
“Our defense in that first half battled their asses off and gave us a chance [to] try to get stuff going,” Falcons quarterback Cooper Rush said after the game. “They played really well early on, and we kept turning the ball over.”
Heading into Week 1, Stefanski noted that “ball security is paramount in this league.” Winning in the NFL is difficult to begin with, and it becomes exponentially more so when a team is on the wrong side of the turnover margin. So far this season, Atlanta has turned the ball over seven times and taken it away once.
Defensively, coordinator Jeff Ulbrich wants his players to create turnovers whenever possible, and the group consistently stressed scooping up any ball that hit the turf during training camp. However, as Jessie Bates III noted after the game, opportunities for takeaways can decrease if an opponent builds up a lead.
“When teams are up on you, it’s hard to get the ball back,” Bates said. “They play it safe and run the ball, run a lot of bootlegs. The ball’s not in the air a lot. So we’ve got to be able to create those early enough to put points on the board so we can have more opportunities at it.”
