And against the Buccaneers on Sunday, the Falcons didn’t. Losing 16-0 in a shutout that saw Baker Mayfield never complete a pass. It’s just the fourth time in NFL history a stat like that could be attributed to a game.

The Bucs offense, however, kept the chains moving as much as they could on the ground. In the end, the Bucs out-gained the Falcons 324-99 in the run game on their way to their second consecutive NFC South win in just as many weeks.

“Those conditions, we were going to run the ball a lot, they were going to run the ball a lot,” Tampa Bay head coach Todd Bowles said. “It was just a matter of who let who out a little bit more and we made some plays.”

For the Falcons, that’s why they can’t — and won’t — use the weather conditions as an excuse for why they lost this game.

“There is not too much of a challenge,” Robinson said of the rain. “All you have to do is just run it efficiently and that can open up some other stuff with the play action pass. I know that these games are wet ballgames but, for us, that can’t matter.”

It didn’t matter for the Bucs, head coach Kevin Stefanski noted. They prevailed. Same conditions and all.

“Obviously, you have to play the game that is presented in front of you,” Stefanski said. “The conditions were what they were for both teams, and we didn’t do a good enough job as a team.”

And as much as you could say the conditions played a factor, or the Bucs defense themselves. When it comes to Atlanta’s Week 8 performance, there was something else in their way, too: Themselves.

“I think it was our own mistakes,” Robinson said of the difference between success offensively and what ended up happening in the game. “The mistakes that we created. We can’t turn the ball over. We have to continue to limit mistakes. … They’re a really good defense, but it shouldn’t matter who runs up across from us, we have to get the job done.”

The Falcons, according to Stefanski, have to “own” the loss and their faults throughout it. A team was going to win that game Sunday. The Falcons can’t — and won’t — use the conditions as the main reason they lost this game.

“Any where, any place, any time, any type of weather,” Bates said, “you have to be ready to play.”