Falcons dismantle Cowboys defense in second half

Sean Lee and Barry Church each had split lips stitched up during Sunday’s game against Atlanta, and returned to action. Those were quite commendable and gutty performances, by most accounts.

But Lee and Church felt far from being tough guys in the Cowboys’ locker room after the game. They more represented a bruised and battered defense that let the Falcons run wild in the second half of a 39-28 whipping of the Cowboys at AT&T Stadium.

“We just played bad,” said Lee, the defensive hero last week who finished with a team-high 10 tackles Sunday.

“You’ve got to give credit to the Falcons, they executed in the second half. We didn’t across the board. It was a bad performance by us, starting with me. We’ve got to find a way to play better in the second half. We can’t allow that to ever happen again.”

It started so promising, too.

The Cowboys’ defense had a three-and-out their first series, including Lee notching his first career sack on third down by tackling Matt Ryan for a 5-yard loss.

That helped Dallas get an early 14-0 lead, and seemingly have the game under control. But the Falcons responded with an 11-play, 80-yard scoring drive, and things continued to unravel from that point.

Atlanta was within 28-17 by halftime, and then picked apart the Dallas defense in the second half.

Ryan didn’t face much pressure after Lee’s early sack. He had plenty of time, for instance, in connecting with Julio Jones on a 45-yard score at the 7:16 mark of the third quarter to make it a 28-25 game after the 2-point conversion.

“In the first half, we did a good job neutralizing No. 11 [Jones],” cornerback Brandon Carr said. “In the second half …”

Carr shook his head, before saying: “We just allowed him to get it going. With a player like that who is a playmaker, when you allow him to get his confidence going making plays, the offense rolls.”

Jones had three catches for 27 in the first half, and nine catches for 137 yards in the second half. Most within the Cowboys didn’t expect that kind of game from Jones considering how well the Cowboys did in containing other top-tiered receivers in the New York Giants’ Odell Beckham Jr. and the Philadelphia Eagles’ Jordan Matthews.

Maybe more surprising than Jones going off was Falcons running back Devonta Freeman having a career day. The Cowboys were fresh off holding the Eagles’ versatile rushing attack to 7 yards last week, but had issues slowing down Freeman, a second-year pro starting in place of rookie Tevin Coleman.

Freeman finished with 141 rushing yards and three TDs on 30 carries.

“It was more us,” middle linebacker Anthony Hitchens said of the run defense. “We weren’t disciplined. We weren’t in our gaps. We’ve just got to go back to the fundamentals of football.”

As Lee said, “Two things we needed to stop — the running game and Julio and Matt Ryan. We didn’t stop any of them.”

The defense also didn’t have any takeaways a week after producing three. Cornerback Morris Claiborne had an interception slip through his hands in the first half, and linebacker Kyle Wilber also whiffed on a possible interception.

In the end, it became a forgettable outing for a defensive unit that had played at a high level the first two weeks. Coming into the game, the Cowboys were ranked as the No. 3 overall defense and had allowed fewer points the first two weeks (36) than on Sunday (39).

“We’re definitely upset,” defensive tackle Tyrone Crawford said. “Definitely motivating to never have this type of game ever again. We’ve definitely got to step up and play our style of defense.

“That’s pathetic the way we played out there tonight in the second half. We definitely need to change that and never have that happen again.”

This story was originally published September 27, 2015 at 8:33 PM with the headline "Falcons dismantle Cowboys defense in second half."