Arthur Smith’s celebrations were real, but the muted tone he struck in some of his postgame comments after Sunday was worth noting. The Falcons’ head coach knows he has a better football team than he did a year ago and is hellbent on that team continuing to show progress, so while a win was extremely welcome, they’re on to Cleveland.
That’d be the Browns, who are mostly surging despite being without suspended quarterback Deshaun Watson and possibly Myles Garrett, who was just involved in a scary single-car wreck but seems to be okay. Smith knows that there’s a good team that can punish Atlanta’s defensive weaknesses and give this impressive offensive line trouble coming to town, and building on the first win of the season by putting together another impressive showing against Cleveland is the priority.