The Falcoholic
The Falcons get set for a matchup against an inter-conference foe when they welcome the Miami Dolphins to the Mercedes-Benz Stadium for the first since the inaugural season of that stadium’s inception. These teams have played plenty of preseason matchups against one another over the past decade, but have just 14 regular season matchups in their history, with Miami owning the advantage with a 9-5 mark.
The Dolphins set the tone early and kept their foot on Atlanta’s neck throughout 25 years of sporadically scheduled matchups, winning six out of seven meetings in that time. Those last four victories in that run were all by one score, however, as the Falcons were right there but could seemingly never get over the hump.
Following a “Dirty Birds” victory during their franchise best 14-2 season in 1998, the spoils have been completely shared since the turn of the millennia, with each team coming away with three victories.
The Falcons were coming off their bye week and looking to claw back to .500 in Arthur Smith’s first season as head coach when they traveled down south to Miami for a date with Brian Flores’ struggling 1-5 Dolphins. Miami took the ball to start the game and went right down the field on a 75-yard drive for a touchdown.
It took Matt Ryan and the Falcons a couple of drives to get going, but the second quarter was all them, scoring two field goals and a Calvin Ridley touchdown to take a 13-7 lead into the half as the defense clamped down. Coming out of the break, a long Ryan to Russell Gage score put the Birds up by two scores.
That was the start of second half fireworks, as Tua Tagovailoa had three second half touchdown passes to fight all the way back, with the go ahead score being to Mack Hollins to take a 28-27 lead with 2:27 remaining. Tua had 16 touchdown passes during the entire 2021 season and a quarter of them came in this game.
Nonetheless, that left too much time on the clock for the great Matt Ryan, who had one of the last fourth quarter comebacks and game winning drives in his storied career as a Falcon, completing back-to-back long passes to rookie tight end Kyle Pitts to get the team into field goal range, as Younghoe Koo kicked the ball through the uprights as time expired.
