The Atlanta Falcons created a lot of turnovers last Monday night – four in the first quarter, to be exact - en route to a win over the Denver Broncos. However, Atlanta wasn't able to consistently find the end zone off of takeaways and failed to put Denver out of reach. They didn't have that problem against San Diego, taking a Ryan Matthews fumble inside the Atlanta 3-yard-line and going 17 plays for a touchdown before the half that shut down the Chargers for the rest of the day.
Mike Smith talked about the total team win after the Falcons' 27-3 victory:
"Well it's something that we've been working on and talking about because we have not done that as efficiently as we'd like. I thought that we had a real good grasp of how we were going to attack them. We wanted to go Into this game early on throwing the football and we were able to do that. I thought our quarterback distributed extremely well. We liked some of the looks that we got especially in that no huddle and he was able to deliver the ball to the proper player."
Smith's Atlanta teams are now 6-0 on the west coast, a stat that's garnered a lot of attention, but one that Smith has repeatedly downplayed. Still, the Falcons haven't lost in the Pacific Time Zone since Smith took over the team in 2008, including a pair of wins in notoriously loud and inhospitable Seattle:
"I know people ask about coming out here to the west coast and why we've had the success we've had. We've had the success because our guys come out here and play good football. There's no magic to it. We rave a plan in place in terms of how we want our guys to prepare for the game both physically and mentally and it's worked for us. The guys do a great job preparing their bodies and preparing their minds."
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