Falcons coach Arthur Smith: ‘Bury us again. We don’t care. We’ll get back to work.’

Atlanta Falcons coach Arthur Smith is concerned what the narrative about his team is after it gave up 17 unanswered points to end the game in its 27-26 loss to the visiting New Orleans Saints on Saturday.

“You’ll continue to write our obituary,” he told the media. “Who cares? We have 16 games. You buried us in May. Bury us again. We don’t care. We’ll get back to work.”

The Falcons (0-1) have plenty of work to do before traveling to Los Angeles for Sunday’s game against the defending Super Bowl champion Rams, who were dominated in a 31-10 loss to the visiting Bills in the NFL’s season-opening game on Thursday.

Atlanta appeared to be in full control after Younghoe Koo’s 27-yard field goal gave the Falcons a 26-10 lead with 12:41 left in the game. But in a trend that has plagued the team for the past few seasons, the Falcons fell apart with the game on the line.

After the Jameis Winston pulled the Saints to 26-18 with a three-yard touchdown pass to Michael Thomas and a two-point toss to Chris Olave with 11:12 remaining, Winston threw a nine-yard scoring strike to Thomas with 3:38 to cut the lead to 26-24 after the Saints’s two-point conversion run failed with 3:38 left.

But the Falcons couldn’t run out the clock, punting the ball to the Saints, who took over at their 20-yard line with 48 seconds remaining. Five plays and 47 yards later, Will Lutz hit a 51-yard field goal with 19 seconds left that ultimately lifted the Saints to a 27-26 win.

Koo’s 63-yard field goal was blocked by Payton Turner as time expired.

But the game wasn’t a total loss for the Falcons, who lost to their hated NFC South rival for the fifth time in the past six meetings.

Marcus Mariota showed some positive signs in his Falcons debut, going 20-for-33 for 215 yards, in addition to rushing for 72 yards, including a two-yard touchdown run, on 12 carries.

But his performance was overshadowed by two critical errors.

The Falcons led 23-10 and had a third-and-5 from the Saints’ 14-yard line with a little more than three minutes left in the third quarter. Mariota scrambled and picked up the first down before he was hit by safety Marcus Maye, who jarred the ball loose at the 5-yard line. Tyrann Mathieu made the recovery for New Orleans.

“Honestly I just lost track of where I was,” Mariota said. “I thought I needed a few more for a first down, so I put my head down not realizing I already had it. Looking back at that situation, I wish I had just gone down and protected the ball and given us a chance to score points.”

His second mistake was even bigger.

With the Falcons leading 26-24 with 1:40 left in the game and facing a third-and-1 from the Saints’ 42-yard line, Mariota fumbled the snap and was swarmed for no gain. If Mariota would have picked up the first down, the Falcons would have been able to take a knee since the Saints didn’t have any timeouts.

Mariota said the fumbled snap was “100 percent on me.”

“We had a great look for the play we had called and I tried to cheat it and get back a little quicker so I would have an opportunity to read it a little bit better,” he added.

Still, the Falcons could have gone for it on fourth down, but Smith chose to punt.

“Sure, there was a part of me that wanted to go for it,” Smith said. “My thought was at the time let the clock bleed down, let’s pin them down. They had no timeouts. … Again if you had to do it over again, knowing the end result, sure a different call.”

Cordarrelle Patterson rushed for a career-high 120 yards and a touchdown on 22 carries and had three catches for 16 yards.

And then there was rookie Drake London, who showed the loss of Calvin Ridley — suspended for the season for betting on NFL games — might not be as worse as it initially seemed. London caught a team-high five passes — on seven targets — for a team-high 74 yards. Olamide Zaccheaus had four receptions for 49 yards, with KhaDarel Hodge adding 28 yards on three catches.

However, tight end Kyle Pitts, whose 1,026 yards last year were the second-most ever by a rookie tight end and trailed on Kelce and Baltimore’s Mark Andrews for the league lead at the position, was held to just two catches for 19 yards on seven targets.

However, no one’s performance will overshadow the result of a game that the Falcons lost as much as the Saints won.

“We had multiple opportunities to put the game away,” Mariota said. “We allowed them as an offense to stick around. That’s something we have to get back and look at and correct.”