Falcons Want Players Watching Playoffs to 'Let it Sting'

After advancing to 6-3 at the season's halfway point, the Atlanta Falcons had a 95% chance to reach the playoffs and, most likely, be a part of this weekend's NFL wildcard round.

Yet Atlanta, after a 2-6 finish, will instead be at home for the postseason -- but head coach Raheem Morris has one more homework assignment for his players: watch the games they wanted to play in.

On his drive home from the Falcons' season-ending 44-38 loss to the Carolina Panthers in Week 18, Morris talked to "a couple of special players on this team" who he didn't directly name. That part was undisclosed. The message was not.

"You say, 'Hey, get away a little bit, get a chance to watch these playoff games and let it sting,'" Morris said. "You want that to sting. You want that to simmer. You want that feeling of that one-two to hit them.

"Just like your coaches, you want all that stuff to happen because the only way you get it is you absolutely want it and you go for it and now we're just going to do that."

The idea, for Morris, is to generate motivation that powers his team through an important offseason.

Parity is commonplace in the NFL. Consider the NFC -- the top two seeds from last year, the San Francisco 49ers and Dallas Cowboys, aren't in the playoffs this year. Of the 14 playoff teams across both conferences, 10 returned from last year, but the other four each bounced back after finishing below .500 in 2023.

The Falcons want to do the same next year. Granted, they've tried for the last six years. But this year, general manager Terry Fontenot said he'll be studying how the playoff teams were built.

"We start off internal, we study ourself and figure out the plan and blueprints to get to where we need to," Fontenot said Thursday. "But not only the teams and the overall studying teams, but specific defenses and what they're doing and how effective they are in specific schemes.

"We study all those things. So, we'll study those teams that have been really effective and do our best to learn and help us make decisions here."

Atlanta studied the Green Bay Packers' quarterback model, which centered around having a rookie quarterback -- in this case, Michael Penix Jr. -- sit behind a veteran signal caller for multiple years.

But after 36-year-old quarterback Kirk Cousins threw only one touchdown and nine interceptions in his final five starts, the Falcons had no choice but to accelerate their initial plan.

Atlanta, which has seven consecutive losing, playoff-less seasons, is hopeful to see greater rewards from its new plan -- starting with studying what works and trying to mimic it moving forward.

During the season, Morris acknowledged he'd like to follow the Detroit Lions' three-year rebuild path. The process involves looking at where the Lions were at the start of their process and understanding how they became the No. 1 seed in the NFC.

"When you watch them play, you look at that team and you see the toughness, you see the execution, you see all the buzzwords that we consistently talk about in football," Morris said. "And that's what you're trying to build to."

The Falcons will have to wait until the divisional round to watch Detroit -- but in the meantime, Morris hopes his players capitalize on the surprisingly early start to their offseason and pulls lessons from those in the place where Atlanta hopes to be next January.