ATLANTA -- Roddy White thought victory was in hand. He truly did.

With 4 minutes, 59 seconds left in regulation on Sunday and his Atlanta Falcons trailing the Cleveland Browns 23-21, White figured the momentum had just turned in the Falcons' favor. He watched teammate Desmond Trufant vault into the air and snare a throw by Browns quarterback Brian Hoyer in the end zone.

"When Tru picked it off, I though the game was over," White said. "I thought we'd just go out there and kind of push the [tempo] up. And I felt like we didn't do that. We just kind of sat back and looked at the clock and said, 'All right, let's try to play this out.' I don't think that's what we should have did.

"We should have kind of attacked those guys because we had them on their heels every time we went up-tempo. But we kind of slowed everything down. And they responded on defense. They did a good job. They made us punt the ball. And then the defense went back and got another interception, gave us great field position. And we managed to only gain 15 yards."

Credit White for his honesty, even if Falcons coach Mike Smith scolds him later for voicing his opinion. Truth is the 4-7 Falcons might not have come up short in a 26-24 loss to the Browns had the offense closed the way it is capable of doing.

Remember, the offense was supposed to carry the Falcons this season.

Yes, there were other contributing factors in defeat. The defense could have put up more resistance on the game's final drive instead of allowing Hoyer and the Browns to drive 61 yards, setting up Billy Cundiff's game-winning, 37-yard field goal. And the game might not have been close had the Falcons not been gashed by Browns rookies Isaiah Crowell and Terrance West for 150 rushing yards, including Crowell's two scores.

But the offense still had a chance to put its stamp on the game late.

Immediately after Trufant's interception, the Falcons' offense stalled, gaining 17 yards on five passing plays. Then the defense had the nerve to come up with another big play as rookie Dezmen Southward intercepted a bad pass by Hoyer, giving the Falcons first-and-10 from their own 45-yard line with 2:42 left.

When Steven Jackson picked up 3 yards on third-and-1 after the two-minute warning, you just knew the Falcons were going to melt the clock and set up a Matt Bryant chip shot for the win. Instead came a mysterious timeout with 55 seconds left that preceded a failed third-down pass play from Matt Ryan to Devin Hester.

Smith explained the timeout.

"We wanted to get our best play for third-and-2 to try and earn the first down," Smith said. "That was our thought. We were right on the edge in terms of where we wanted to be in terms of field goal range. We wanted to get a first down."

The timeout would have been a moot point had the Falcons picked up the first down from the Cleveland 35-yard line. Instead, Ryan tried to go deep to Hester in one-on-one coverage with struggling Browns rookie Justin Gilbert, and the attempt failed.

"The look that they gave us said to throw the ball, and we did," Smith said. "And we didn't convert it."

It led to Bryant's go-ahead, 53-yard field goal that Smith admitted was out of the range the Falcons were looking for. More importantly, the failed third down stopped the clock and gave the Browns enough time -- 44 seconds with three timeouts -- to march down for Cundiff's winning field goal.

Browns cornerback Joe Haden didn't understand why the Falcons went deep to Hester on third down.

"I was thinking they were going to run something to the sticks because on third downs, they run stick plays," Haden said. "Julio [Jones], he ran another fade again, so I was on top of that. But I thought they were going to the sticks. I was playing on top of [Jones], waiting for him to sit down."

Ryan, who completed 27 of 43 passes for 273 yards and two touchdowns with an interception, offered his thoughts on the third-down throw to Hester.

"A good situation: one-on-one on Dev," Ryan said. "Felt like we had an opportunity to get it down the field. Probably should have given him a better chance at it, but I didn't throw the ball the way that I needed to.

"In situations like that, when you have opportunities to close things out or to make plays, you've got to make them. And I didn't do a good enough job of that."

All that being said, the Falcons remain 4-0 in the NFC South and could be right back in first place if New Orleans (4-6) loses to Baltimore on Monday night.

"Today, we just didn't play well on offense," White said. "We didn't play well enough to win, I'll tell you that. We've got to play better. Defense did a good job today. ... Gave us three turnovers. Gave us short fields. I felt like they did pretty good. We just didn't hold our end of the bargain."