We’ve already established that Atlanta Falcons head coach Arthur Smith was really unhappy about the New Orleans Saints’ decision to go for a touchdown run out of a victory formation late in what became a 48-17 Saints win. And as it turned out, Saints head coach Dennis Allen wasn’t in favor of the decision to hand the ball to running back Jamaal Williams from the one-yard line with 1:10 left in the game. The Saints were in that position after defensive back Tyrann Mathieu returned a Logan Woodside pass 74 yards… and ran out of gas at the end.
Allen would have preferred that his team kneel the clock out and walk out of the stadium with a win. Quarterback Jameis Winston had other ideas. Williams, who led the NFL in rushing touchdowns with 17 for the Detroit Lions in 2022, didn’t have a single touchdown in the 2023 season. And Winston wanted to give his guy one.
That led to this.
I thought the idea was that if you don’t want your opponent to ring your asses up, you stop them. pic.twitter.com/60mjvOCLwK
— Doug Farrar ✍ (@NFL_DougFarrar) January 7, 2024
“I want to start off by apologizing to Arthur Smith and the Falcons,” Allen said. “That was not a play that we intended to run down there to finish off the game. That’s not who we are. That’s not how we operate. We should have taken a knee, so I want to apologize to them. We have a good rivalry, and it’s a heated rivalry, but there’s a way we go about doing our business. I wasn’t happy about that.
“We should have taken a knee right there. They asked me about getting Jamaal a touchdown there at the end. I said I wanted to take a knee. We put victory [formation] out there. The guys kind of wanted to give him a touchdown. They did that on their own. That’s not acceptable.”
So, that’s what happened, and Winston explained it after the game in his own inimitable fashion.
One of my all time faves loll. pic.twitter.com/bAhIEWikU3
— FOST (@GeorgeFoster72) January 8, 2024
“They can do whatever they want,” Smith concluded. “There are no rules against it. Like I said, we did not stop them in the second half. They can do whatever they want. It is what it is. Hat’s off to them. They kicked our you-know-what in the second half. They made us play. They took advantage of turnovers. That’s their prerogative [to try to score]. It’s my prerogative to tell them how I feel. Like that or not, oh well. Credit to them. They can do whatever they want there.”
