MMQB Mail: Falcons can thank its stars, and non-stars, for playoff life

Accustomed to being out of the spotlight, Falcons lineman Justin Blalock (63, in background) might have saved Atlanta's season by pouncing on this Matt Ryan fumble. AP

If the Falcons make the playoffs -- and they'll need help even if they win their final two games to finish 11-5 -- they'll be able to look back and thank Justin Blalock for making the biggest play in the biggest game of the season.

Not Matt Ryan. Not Roddy White. Not John Abraham. Justin Blalock.

I'll get to Blalock in a moment, but I have to tell you about the Byzantine tiebreaker that would could have the Falcons winning out, tying Tampa Bay and Dallas at 11-5, and still missing out on a playoff spot -- while the nine-win Vikings and eight-win Cardinals could not only make the playoffs but play home games on Wild Card weekend.

It's a very strange playoff run, and totally fitting that Justin Blalock is the reason Atlanta still has real life today.

If Dallas, Atlanta and Tampa finish tied at 11-5, here's why Atlanta stays home, and why the Falcons need to be rooting very hard for Ray Lewis and the Ravens Saturday night in Dallas:

In a three-team Wild Card tiebreaker, the first issue is breaking ties between two division teams. So it's Bucs versus Falcons, if they finish tied at 11-5.

First tiebreaker: head-to-head play. They finished 1-1 against each other.

Second tiebreaker: division record, which is a tie at 3-3.

Third tiebreaker: record in common games, which is a tie at 8-4.

Fourth tiebreaker: conference record, which is a tie at 8-4.

Fifth tiebreaker: strength of victory. Now it gets interesting. If you assume wins over each of their final two foes, that would give Tampa Bay a one-game edge in strength of victory -- 63 wins by Buc foes, 62 by Falcon foes. But you don't know how many wins those foes will get, collectively, over the last two weeks, so this is an unpredictable tiebreaker right now. Which could lead us to ...

Sixth tiebreaker: strength of schedule. And this is where it would end, because the Eagles tied the Bengals. Atlanta played the Eagles and Tampa Bay did not. So that tie would break the tie, because it would be factored into the winning percentage for the Falcons, and it would make the percentage, for better or worse, different than Tampa Bay's.

Got that? I'm not sure I do. (For more on playoff scenarios, read SI.com's Playoff Projections.)

***

Now for the Blalock story. I'm almost rooting for the Falcons to make it, just so Blalock gets his due. Think back to overtime Sunday, Atlanta and Tampa Bay tied at 10, the Falcons driving. On second-and-eight from the Buc 43, Matt Ryan scrambled forward, and from behind Buc defensive end Kevin Carter dove on his back and stripped the ball from Ryan at the Buc 39. Tampa Bay linebacker Barrett Ruud dove on the ball, cradled it in his right arm as he attempted to curl his body over the ball, and within a millisecond was snowed under by Bucs and Falcons alike.

Six seconds later, as the officials pried bodies away from the pile, they signaled for the Falcons and yelled, "Atlanta ball!'' And Blalock emerged with the football.

So what happened?

"Mostly grasping, gouging and punching in some unmentionable areas,'' said Blalock, a second-year guard from Texas. "Just chaos. Hopefully our season doesn't come down to that one play, but if that's the big one, I'm glad I was able to make it.''

What happens on the bottom of scrums is one of the great mysteries of the NFL. Once, Boomer Esiason told me he was at the bottom of a pile, having lost a fumble, and looked over to see Cleveland Browns nose tackle Bob Golic right next to his face. They couldn't go anywhere, so Boomer said to him: "Hey, you ever get those boots I sent you?'' Seems that Esiason had sent Golic a pair of Cowboy boots as thanks for an appearance on a radio show of his, and Golic said yes, he got them, and thank you. But it's usually not that cordial under there.

In this case, Blalock saw the ball come out, saw Ruud beginning to cradle it, and just dove for it. "He [Ruud] had one hand on it and he was trying to get his body over it so no one could pry it loose. I got my right arm in there, then wedged my body closer and just sort of moved him out of the way and got on the ball. It's physics. I'm just bigger, and I had the leverage. Then it was just crazy, with everybody jumping in there and trying to get it. My guys kept asking, 'You got it? You got it?' And I said I had it.''

He said it didn't occur to him how big the play was at the time. But the Falcons finished the drive with the winning Jason Elam field goal. If Ruud recovers that fumble, the Bucs would have needed to drive 30 yards to try a winning field goal of their own. At 8-6, Atlanta would have been a longshot in the NFC playoff race, needing two wins and lots of help to make it. At 9-5, they're major players.

"I didn't have the luxury to think about that at the time, obviously,'' Blalock said. "Now that I can think about it, I'm pretty happy. The strange thing is, that's only the second time I've ever touched the ball in a football game. At Texas once, I recovered a fumbled snap late one game. But that's it. This one is probably a little bigger.''

This one, in fact, is the kind of thievery that can save a season.

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