FLOWERY BRANCH, Ga. — With a demanding owner sniffing over every move, decision and step sideways, coach Mike Smith must try to rally his team and drag it back to respectability.

The Falcons have a bye this week before playing at Tampa Bay, when the chore starts full time.

Before this season, the Falcons insisted that last season’s descent from the NFC Championship Game in 2012 to 4-12 in 2013 was an aberration. After posting five consecutive winning seasons, they viewed the 2013 season as an injury-riddled outlier.

But halfway through the 2014 season, they have more serious depth issues. The line has been ravaged by injuries again. While the depth is better than last season, it’s not good enough to protect quarterback Matt Ryan or consistently open up holes in the running game.

Despite a five-game losing streak dropping the Falcons to 2-6, Smith said he has no concerns about his job security.

“None whatsoever,” Smith said Monday. “We are going to do what we’ve done the last six-plus years and prepare each and every week like we know how to do it, and I’m going to continue to do that until Mr. (Arthur) Blank tells me otherwise.”

Blank, the team owner, expressed disgust with the Falcons’ 22-21 loss to the Lions on Sunday. The Falcons led 21-0 at halftime and 21-19 in the final two minutes.

“You’re up 21-0,” Blank told The Atlanta-Journal Constitution. “There’s no way you lose that game — just no way. There’s nothing else I can say.”

Smith said he talks with Blank after each game but declined to share any details of their conversation on Sunday.

“I agree with him,” Smith said. “When you are up 21-0 at halftime, you should not lose that football game.”

The Falcons were 56-24 in the first five seasons under Smith, who is the franchise’s winningest coach. But they are just 6-18 since the beginning of last season, and five of their six losses this season have been by double-digit margins.

Unless Smith can stop the slide, the Falcons appear headed for another high draft pick.

At that point, the only other question will be whether Smith and general manager Thomas Dimitroff are around to make that pick.

Smith looked physically ill after the 22-21 loss to Detroit, in which his decisions played a role.

“Very disappointed in the way that we played in the second half of the football game,” Smith said. “You can’t make the mistakes that we made in the second half against a good football team because when you do they’re going to come back and haunt you. They did.”

Smith didn’t want to dwell on the re-kick at the end of the game. It sailed wide right, but a delay-of-game penalty was called even though television cameras showed that the kick was off in time.

“You know, that’s football,” Smith said. “He missed it, and it was a delay-of-game penalty. The clock was stopped, so there was not going to be a 10-second runoff. If the clock would have been running, it would have been a 10-second runoff, the way it was explained to me, and I thought we were going to squeak one out.”

The Falcons probably need to go 8-0 or 7-1 to have a shot at the playoffs. But the way they are playing, that seems a bit unrealistic.

They’ve had leads or have been tied in the second half in four of the five defeats, but they have faded down the stretch.

“When you lose a football game, it hurts,” Smith said. “We felt coming into (the Detroit) game that, if we took care of what we needed to, it would put us in a very different situation than what we’ve been over the last couple of weeks, because of the bye week and two division games coming after the bye week.”

The Falcons were hoping to pull to 3-5 and then beat Tampa Bay and Carolina to pull to 5-5. Then the Falcons could have rebooted their season from the .500 mark.

“This is probably as tough a loss to take as any I’ve been a part of,” Ryan said. “I really feel like we had a lot of different chances to win that ballgame and consistently didn’t make plays when we needed to.

“We’ve got to find a way to get better over the course of the bye week, and I think everybody needs to look in the mirror and self-critique and really — when we get back to work — have a great mindset and a great sense of focus.”

NOTES: RB Steven Jackson became the 19th player in NFL history to rush for more than 11,000 yards. He rushed for a season-high 60 yards on 18 carries and scored on a 1-yard touchdown run that put the Falcons up 21-0. … Since 2008, the Falcons have scored an NFL-best 98 touchdowns on drives lasting 10 or more plays. They have scored on more than 80 percent of their drives that have lasted 10 plays or more.

REPORT CARD VS. LIONS

–PASSING OFFENSE: C — Matt Ryan was 14 of 17 for 160 yards in the first half. He was 6 of 10 for 68 yards in the second half. He tied his season low of 228 yards. He threw two touchdown passes and one Brett Favre-esque interception. Julio Jones’ dropped screen pass played a role in the Lions’ comeback. Roddy White caught five of six targets. Harry Douglas caught three of his five targets and had a big third-down catch that appeared to wrap up the game. Levine Toilolo caught his two targets for 26 yards. The Falcons were 3 of 4 on third downs in the first half and 1 of 4 in the second half. The long grass and soggy field helped the Falcons in the first half as Ryan was able to dissect the defense. Talent eventually won out over guts as the Lions sacked Ryan twice and got five quarterback hits.

–RUSHING OFFENSE: D — The Falcons rushed 26 times for 78 yards for a paltry 3.0 yards per carry. The rushing attack didn’t do enough with 3:56 left to help the team run out the clock. Undrafted rookie James Stone made his first career start. Also, Ryan Schraeder started at right tackle for Gabe Carimi. Carimi played as the jumbo tight end.

–PASS DEFENSE: F — Surprisingly, Malliciah Goodman started in place of Jonathan Babineaux instead of Jonathan Massaquoi, who was coming off the best game of the year for any of the defensive ends/outside linebackers. There were no sacks and four quarterback hits. Second-year cornerback Robert Alford had another pass interference call, but he also picked up his third interception of the year. Dwight Lowery was a menacing force, with a big hit on Golden Tate that sent him out of bounds. Kemal Ishmael didn’t learn his lesson from the Chicago game, when he was involved in a 74-yard pass from Jay Cutler to Alshon Jeffery, as he let Golden Tate get behind him on third-and-25 in this game. It may be time for Dezmen Southward to take over at free safety.

–RUSH DEFENSE: D — Linebackers Joplo Bartu and Paul Worrilow had five and four tackles respectively. Outside linebacker Kroy Biermann flushed Matt Stafford on one play and had a pass defensed. The unit did a good job of bottling up Joique Bell, who rushed for just 39 yards on 14 carries.

–SPECIAL TEAMS: C-minus — The Falcons talked about springing Devin Hester loose. He did have one punt return for 20 yards. He also had two kickoff returns for 44 yards. After the Falcons went three-and-out on their first possession of the second half, punter Matt Bosher got off a 29-yard punt that had Falcons personnel executives howling and banging on desks in the press box.

–COACHING: C — A for the first half, F for the second half. The coaching staff clearly had the team ready to play. They jumped on the Lions, but didn’t put them away. Coach Mike Smith has to regret not at least trying to get into position for a field goal or at least for a Hail Mary heave at the end of the first half. His conservative call likely led to the laissez-faire approach at the start of the second half. He forgot about one of the old boxing/coaching axioms: When you have the champ on the ropes, you have to knock him out. That’s what he preached at halftime in the locker room, but he didn’t do it himself with 1:14 left.