Turnovers costly for Falcons in loss to Colts

Indianapolis kicker Adam Vinatieri celebrated the 300th game of his career by kicking a 43-yard game-winning field goal in the Colts’ 24-21 comeback win over the fading Atlanta Falcons on Sunday in the Georgia Dome.

With Luck helping out on the sideline, Hasselbeck overcame a couple of interceptions and calmly led the winning drive for the Colts (5-5), covering 56 yards in nine plays. Colts linebacker D’Qwell Jackson returned one of those interceptions for a touchdown and the loss touched off another round of questions about what’s wrong with Ryan.

The first priority is knocking off the Colts (4-5), who are actually tied for the lead in the AFC South despite a tumultuous year that has sparked debate about the future of coach Chuck Pagano.

They won five straight matches to start the season, but have only been 1-4 in their last four games. After the Falcons took a 21-7 lead on the first drive of the second half, he guided a 90-yard drive (helped along by three Falcons penalties that produced first downs) and again capped it with a short toss to Bradshaw. Atlanta lost even though Julio Jones had another huge game, hauling in nine passes for 160 yards. The Colts forced four turnovers, including three interceptions of Falcons quarterback Matt Ryan.

With the offense racking up just 276 yards of offense and two touchdowns to go with three turnovers, the defense kept them in the game against a potent offense. Tight end Jacob Tamme had one catch for 7 yards.

“That’s why he is a first ballot Hall of Famer and why I’m the luckiest guy in the world to have him as a mentor”. 500 for the first time in nearly a month. If I had thrown just one more left hook so we could have won this football game’. Teddy Bridgewater is completing 64.6 percent of his passes for 2,106 yards, eight touchdowns and six interceptions. The Colts will take on Tampa Bay in a home game this week. You’d only know that Jacob Tamme was a big a part of an offense if you were a fantasy player in a PPR league. The team has 84 yards receiving, 11 catches, one touchdown.

It’s obviously not all on Ryan to lift the team up, but he certainly has to play better than he has been if the Falcons want to capitalize on their 5-0 start and get to the playoffs. Leonard Hankerson, who was returning after missing two games with a hamstring injury, had a major dropped pass in the end zone. We felt like that’s another way for us to attack, and we’ll evaluate that as we got through it tomorrow and see which of those plays that we like and how much of that we use moving forward.

To make matters worse, Indy and Houston were playing with backup quarterbacks, as Andrew Luck and Brian Hoyer were out.

“I really don’t have a lot to go on other than he’s off to a good start to that”, Quinn said Monday.

RUSH DEFENSE: A. The unit continued to be stout against the run, holding Frank Gore and Ahmad Bradshaw in check. Devonta Freeman, the league’s leading rusher coming into that contest, was held to 12 yards on 12 carries. (Yes, we just applied that tag to someone who isn’t white.) But the Falcons needed way more than a slot receiver. “Stout against the run, but he does a great job getting back into pass coverage”.