Falcons' Desmond Ridder Frustrated with 'Bag of Crap' Penalties
The Atlanta Falcons suffered their first loss of the season on Sunday when they traveled to Ford Field to face the Detroit Lions.
The game didn't go nearly as planned for Atlanta, who was held scoreless on offense mustering just two field goals all game. And, while they didn't have nearly as many penalties as the Lions who finished the game with 10 for 119 yards, it was the timing of the penalties that hurt them as explained by quarterback Desmond Ridder.
“Yeah, well we go back in the – got the pre-snap penalty called the run play and wrong guy lined up, got too many guys in motion, so it’s a bag of crap right there and it moves it back and then yeah, we just got stopped down there,” Ridder said.
Ridder also explained that the penalties were among the reasons they lost, not because the Lions are a better team than they are.
“Yeah, we were just shooting ourselves," Ridder said. "Like I said, we weren’t starting on any of those drives. We weren’t able to get anything going, so I feel like you talk about it. It’ll never be – and a lot of teams talk about this, it’ll never be another team beating you, rather than you beat yourself and there’s a lot of times in our situations where we go out there and we beat ourselves and not play to our full potential.”
In the loss to the Lions, Ridder himself had his worst statistical game of the season, completing just 55.3 percent of his passes, and was sacked a season-high seven times.
The loss dropped the Falcons to 2-1 on the year, and now they have the tough task of going across the pond to London to take on the Jacksonville Jaguars (1-2) for the "International Series" games.