Mike Smith was happy with his team's effort in Friday night's 23-6 preseason win over the Miami Dolphins, the Atlanta Falcons coach said in post-game quotes supplied by D. Orlando Ledbetter of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The win snapped a seven-game exhibition losing streak that dated back to 2010. Matt Ryan continued a torrid preseason by completing 18 of 26 passes for 220 yards and a gorgeous 20-yard TD pass to Roddy White. Smith was pleased:
"I think Matt had a very productive preseason. Again, the preseason is working on things. You do game plan somewhat in this third preseason game. There were still some things we wanted to work on and in turn, that fit into what we were doing game-plan wise. I think Matt maybe was somewhere over 72, maybe somewhere closer to 75 percent in his completions here in the preseason. Matt did a nice job. I think he has a really good understanding of what we are trying to get done with our new staff."
Smith was also impressed with the other quarterback, Dolphins rookie Ryan Tannehill:
"He’s very athletic. I thought he did a nice job. It looked like he had a very good command of the offense. He moved well within it. He took off and ran it a couple of times. He had a nice 15-yard scramble on third down. He looked like he had a very good understanding of their offense. You could see that he was getting them into plays and out of plays based on the defensive looks."
A big bugaboo for the 2011 Falcons was short-yardage conversions. There's still work to be done there:
"To me that was not a true short yardage (situation). It was a fourth down-and-2. It wasn’t a fourth-and-1. We were right on the edge in terms of whether if we wanted to attempt a field goal in terms of the mark that we set in pre-game. There is a swirling win in this stadium. We felt like we had a chance to get the fourth down. We didn’t convert it and at that point in time we probably left some points potentially on the field and not on the scoreboard."
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