CHARLOTTE -- About eight minutes into Sunday's 38-0 loss to the undefeated Carolina Panthers, Atlanta Falcons coach Dan Quinn, already down two touchdowns, huddled his defense on the sideline and offered an intense speech.

"I talked about poise on the sideline today with the club," Quinn said. "We knew that was going to be an important part going into this game, so for us to not have opportunities where we lost our poise or didn't make the correct decisions. ... I wanted to go right back to our poise and play football in the exact style that we want."

Quinn's attempt to rally his troops occurred shortly after defensive tackle Ra'Shede Hageman got into a shoving match with defensive line coach Bryan Cox, but Quinn said that incident wasn't the catalyst. It also came after struggling cornerback Robert Alford gave up a 74-yard touchdown to Ted Ginn Jr.

And five minutes after Quinn addressed the defense, the Falcons gave up a 46-yard touchdown catch to Ginn with linebacker Philip Wheeler and free safety Ricardo Allen in coverage.

So did they get the message?

"They did not," Quinn said. "In that case, the message was about poise both sides, offense as well. That's totally unacceptable all the way across -- like I said, players, coaches, everybody in terms of style and attitude that we played with."

The Falcons haven't gotten the message weeks for now. Actually, a couple months.

The team that started 5-0 is now 6-7 after losing its sixth straight game. The focus should now shift toward how to fix things for next year rather than trying to salvage was is set to become a third consecutive playoff-less campaign.

Sunday, the Falcons looked like the type of team that has taken the field the previous two seasons -- a team folks would label as "soft" while being pushed around up front on both sides of the ball along with the mental breakdowns.

"That's not us," linebacker O'Brien Schofield said. "We put out there, how we started the game, it's not who we are as a football team. Me personally, I am just a little embarrassed because we owe our head coach, we owe our coaches, we owe our organization, we owe our fans, we owe each other more than that."

Plenty needs to be re-evaluated over the final three games. Quinn has to figure out if he has the correct coaches around him to bring the best out of the players. He has to see if he has the right support group in the front office to help him acquire the proper personnel for championship football.

The players have to look at themselves and ask if they want to end the season as the laughing stock of the league -- especially if they go to Jacksonville next week and get pounded, like Indianapolis did -- or if they want to show they can finish the season strong.

And Matt Ryan, the franchise quarterback, has to step up, show leadership and play at a high level regardless of any obstacles caused by the offensive system or the line blocking.

"There's a time and a place to be tough and to demand more, and there's a time and a place where you have to build people up and get the best from them," Ryan said. "[I] have to find a way to get the best out of myself and the guys around me, and I haven't done a good enough job of that."

Neither have the Falcons, as a whole. Left tackle Jake Matthews might have summed it up the best: "I think we need to get a new mentality. The past few weeks, we weren't the same team that came out the first five weeks. We've got to change something because what we're doing now obviously isn't working."