Falcons have entered the giving season

Published 8:30 pm Saturday, November 7, 2015

Now that Halloween has come and gone, it seems America’s attention has already turned to the Christmas holidays, the season of giving.

The Atlanta Falcons, meanwhile, have been generously giving for weeks now. You want an authentic NFL football? Just take the field against the professional football team in Atlanta — they’ve given away 12 in the last four weeks.

Turnovers are hard to overcome, and they can quickly change the momentum of a game, but they hurt that much more when, as with the Falcons, they happen in scoring range while your team is moving the ball well.

You can’t win games that way, but you can surely give them away. So it’s safe to say Christmas came early for the New Orleans Saints and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Last week

Midway through the season the Falcons have only played two division games (both losses), and yet they’ve already lost more division games this season than last (that oh-so-important Week 17 loss to the Carolina Panthers last year was their only divisional lost).

As with the loss to the Saints (ugh, I hate typing that combination of words), the Falcons moved the ball well and played good football overall. But, just when it looked like they might score, they gave the ball away. Over and over and over and over again. Four times.

Except for the Julio Jones fumble, on which he was stripped thanks to a great play by the Tampa Bay defensive back, the turnovers were almost entirely unforced: yet another botched snap, a Matt Ryan fumble caused when he hit the fullback with the ball during a handoff to the running back, and a Ryan interception on a poor decision.  

These are mental errors. These, in theory, can be corrected. Let’s hope it happens.

This week

The Falcons travel to Santa Clara, Calif., to play the San Francisco 49ers, a lose collection of professional athletes that have taken to calling themselves a football team.

If you haven’t been paying attention, between retirements, injuries and trades, the 49ers only have a handful of starters who were also starting Week 17 last season. Things have gone really badly for them over the past calendar year, so bad in fact that this week they are benching quarterback Colin  Kaepernick in favor of Blaine Gabbert. Yes, the quarterback cast off by the Jacksonville Jaguars.

And as if the Falcons weren’t already motivated to right the ship after last week’s loss, the 49ers coaching staff apparently waited until this week to start Gabbert because they believe Atlanta has a weak defense.

Well, this week they may not be wrong. Starters Justin Durant, William Moore and Robert Alford have all been declared out for today. On the other side of the ball, starting center Mike Person and wide receiver Leonard Hankerson are both unlikely to play.

It’s a good week to face a team in shambles because a win followed by the bye week would do wonders for the moral around Flowery Branch. If you would have told me back in August that the Falcons would have a record of 7-2 and a week of rest entering Week 11, I would have celebrated.

Heck, even 6-3 wouldn’t be bad, but you really don’t want to lose to the Gabbert-led 49ers, not after losing last week.

I’m counting on the Falcons to give up their giving ways and get away with a win.

Prediction: Falcons 23, 49ers 13