Dan Quinn continues to replay Super Bowl collapse

INDIANAPOLIS — Coach Dan Quinn of the Atlanta Falcons, after a flurry of coaching moves, finally had some time to push back from his desk, turn off the film and reflect on his team’s collapse in Super LI.

Quinn admits there are some “do-overs” he’d like. He has watched the game “a lot” of times and said it was a case study in NFL game mismanagement.

“You have to own that,” Quinn said. “The calls. The things you can do differently. That’s not unlike most Sunday nights for me where I wrestle with all three phases, could there be something different, as a head coach those are the moments that I do have to own.”

The Falcons held a 28-3 lead over the New England Patriots before everything that could go wrong did. The team collapsed on several fronts from players not making plays to questionable play calling and the lack of intervention from Quinn to re-direct the play-calling.

The Falcons ended up losing 34-28 in overtime to the Patriots.

“When they asked me if I watched it, I say ‘Yes,’” Quinn said. “I am past it. I am not over it. I don’t think I ever will be and that’s a good thing.”

Quinn is hoping that his young team will grow from the devastating defeat.

“Those kind of experiences propel you to have the kind of offseasons that you like to have,” Quinn said. “The analogy that I use for our team is that we are fighters. … We talk about boxing quite a bit.

“We got our asses knocked down on the canvass.”

Quinn looked at his defensive-playing in the second half, too. We played man-to-man defense on 29 snaps and zone defense on 27 snaps.

“Any time that you play 90 plays you’re going to get tired,” Quinn said. “There is a by product of that, not playing as well on third down.”

Quinn was pleased with the eight tackles for losses, five sacks and the defensive touchdown.

What the Falcons do next will determine the future of the franchise.

“You get back up and you go fight again,” Quinn said. “That’s kind of what this offseason is about for us.”

Quinn has a path that he’d like to take the 2017 Falcons on, but clearly the soul-searching has been deep.

“There are consequences good and bad when you make plays and when you don’t,” Quinn said. “Owning those decisions.”

Quinn has replayed all of the scenarios.

“What I can tell you is that being in that experience and battling for it at the highest level, you can’t duplicate that,” Quinn said. “We actually had on the job training and there is something that you totally gain from that. We’ll be stronger for it.

“It’s tough and painful to go through when you have a difficult loss. It doesn’t define us. We have got a team that’s totally on the rise. We are going to battle like crazy this offseason to become even better moving forward.”

Quinn has a plan to make sure the team doesn’t have a Super Bowl hangover.

“You’ve got to learn to get past it,” Quinn said. “I didn’t say that you have to get over it. You do have to get past it.”