"Thanks to a 17-10 loss to the Houston Texans, the Falcons' chances of repeating as NFC South champions are on life support. At 7-5, they trail the New Orleans Saints (9-3) by two games with four to play. Realistically, they are in a battle with Detroit (7-5), Chicago (7-5) and the New York Giants (6-6) for one of the two wild-card bids.

What we learned

1. Falcons can't hit the deep ball. The Falcons had a great plan to attack the No. 1-ranked defense with some deep surgical strikes. But when quarterback Matt Ryan missed on early passes to Roddy White and Julio Jones and didn't execute a flea-flicker play with precision, Houston safeties Glover Quin and Danieal Manning were free to stalk running back Michael Turner. The flea flicker was intercepted after Ryan received a high toss from Turner. Ryan's 50.6 passer rating was his worst showing since he had 46.6 against the Saints in 2009, 35 regular-season games ago. It was the fourth-lowest rating of his career."