The Atlanta Falcons let us down. They let us down in the postseason, the middle of the year, the opener, but we know disappointment is lurking long-armed and many-clawed just around the corner at any given moment. We believe—perhaps we know—one day they will fail to disappoint, and we reap the glorious reward of many long years of faith and fandom. But in the interim, and never knowing when that wondrous day might arrive, we know the Falcons have a nasty habit of letting us down.
They let us down on Sunday, capping off an uneven but hard-fought loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The missed opportunities to get the stop they needed, the missed opportunities on late downs and short yardage, the missed connections and drops, and ultimately the missed field goal cost the Falcons a very winnable game. The Bucs were not particularly sharp despite their obvious talent, and the Falcons poured jet fuel on that by making that high-powered offense uncomfortable for long stretches, which meant the Falcons hung tough and showed us what they were made of right until they didn’t. It was classic Falcons, in that hope is a flame extinguished very late, and with a swiftness that leaves the dark and cold to come much more keenly felt.
The loss obviously overshadows the positives, but those positives were quite real. The Falcons showed they were nearly dead even with the Buccaneers, a team expected to win the division, and did so despite stumbling from bear trap to bear trap on this September afternoon. Michael Penix Jr. overcome some jitters and misfires to get the Falcons in range on a game-tying field goal—and was one excellent defensive play from Antoine Winfield away from a sure victory—and the defense did enough to hold Baker Mayfield in check and make him throw dubious balls repeatedly. They held the Bucs to 23 points, their lowest output in this matchup their first contest in 2023, and held non-Mayfield ball-carriers to 62 yards on 18 carries. The defense was better than it was early last year and the offense showed promise, even if it was not exactly a stellar effort from that side of the ball.
But it’s hard to lose when you have the opportunity to win or tie in such a crucial opener and feel good about it, and honestly, I felt extremely downbeat about this one in the immediate aftermath and still glum once I got a couple beers and a lot of angst out of my system in the evening hours. It’s easy and tempting to think the Falcons will only get better from here, and in the days and weeks ahead, that pull will exert itself powerfully on me and many of you. But the Falcons losing in confounding, dispiriting fashion is simply a fact of life at this point, as it has been for their history and most relevantly the past seven seasons. Perhaps we’ll get to chalk this up to Week 1 when all is said and done, but wary fans will remain wary for good reason.
What’s next? The Falcons must step up and respond after a crushing initial loss, and there’s too much talent here for me to bet against them rebounding in spectacular fashion once they work out the kins. But if you’re feeling discouraged after that loss, know you’re hardly alone, however much perspective we may all bring to the table.
It’s up to the Falcons to prove to us, after robbing us of our bright lights again on a Sunday, that the first loss won’t define yet another season. They have the ability, the talent, and the opportunity to do so; whether they will take that trio of advantages and turn it into something more than an on-paper positive remains to be seen. In the meantime, this was a fresh reminder that betting on the letdown unfortunately remains a strong bet.
On to the full recap, as is custom.
- Bijan Robinson is special, and he shows in ways large and small each week. In this one, he took a short pass from Michael Penix to the house, with some great blocking from Kyle Pitts and Casey Washington enabling the score. Despite the blocking, Bijan left multiple defenders in the dust and kept choosing exactly the right angle to run at to evade more Buccaneers, the mark of a player who sees the field with eyes few have. It wasn’t all smooth—once again, the star back didn’t have much of a day on the ground against the Bucs—but he finished with 124 yards total and a touchdown on 18 touches. The brilliance in the run game will come.
- Michael Penix Jr. missed some throws, flat out, and had one run play where he slid far too early. He got away with a couple of dropped interceptions, one on a tipped ball, and couldn’t connect in the end zone on a potentially game-winning play. There were young quarterback mistakes, as you’d expect, and they contributed to the team’s limited scoring. But Penix also threw for nearly 300 yards, made a brilliant diving play on a scramble to pull ahead late in this one, and nearly had the Falcons piloted to the win once again with a nice throw broken up on a great play by Antoine Winfield and an end zone ball KhaDarel Hodge simply didn’t seem to see. There was toughness in the sacks Penix shrugged off, resilience in the way he bounced back from mistakes to scramble for a hard-fought first down or connect on one of his absolute lasers to the sideline, and grit in the way he kept this team in it until the end. He was in position for Younghoe Koo to take it to overtime with a 44 yard field goal try even after all that, and again, the two throws before that both could have been game winners. That’s the kind of uneven but promising performance a quarterback making his fourth career start in the NFL should deliver, and that should give us hope as Penix gears up to face a relentless pass rush next week.
- I liked what we saw from multiple receivers on Sunday, even if there were too many errors to feel great. Drake London battled through injuries and drops to make eight grabs, Kyle Pitts put up seven receptions for 59 yards and some solid blocking, Ray-Ray McCloud made three critical grabs for 51 yards, and Casey Washington had three catches for 33 yards in his first start, all of them displaying his quality hands. So long as London is healthy, it’s not difficult to imagine things getting better for this group from here, particularly with Darnell Mooney destined to return soon and lift the floor of this passing game. Mooney was particularly missed downfield on Sunday.
- Divine Deablo looks like exactly the player the Falcons hoped he would be. He flew into the backfield like a bat out of hell as a pass rusher and run defender and managed a nice pass breakup early on that helped kill a Bucs drive. It wasn’t a perfect day, but the athleticism and aggression were terrific, and should translate to better inside linebacker play than the Falcons enjoyed a year ago. He had a half sack and multiple pressures on a day where the pass rush didn’t deliver much in the way of sacks but did disorient Mayfield thoroughly.
- That was nice to see, by the way. Obviously you’d prefer to get some lost yardage in the mix there that the Falcons didn’t, and you’d look for the pass rush to deliver in big moments all game long. But the Falcons did ratchet up the pressure and got it consistently, even on plays where things went awry, like Ruke Orhorhoro’s roughing the passer call where he pressured Mayfield into a throwaway and then made contact anyways. Hopefully they can get after J.J. McCarthy next week with even greater vigor.
- I loved seeing the effort from Xavier Watts in his first NFL regular season game. He tied for the team lead in tackles, made multiple great plays in coverage, and showcased instincts that could genuinely make him special in the NFL. It won’t always be great, but the Falcons appear to have a gem at safety.
- The secondary played well overall, though Mike Hughes had his adventures. We saw Jessie Bates making a couple of big-time stops, AJ Terrell making nice plays in coverage, and Billy Bowman Jr. holding his own in a tough matchup, even though Emeka Egbuka got the better of him a couple of times. It was a stark difference from last year, minus the complete loss of Cade Otton on a play where Mayfield thankfully missed entirely.
- Jamal Agnew looks like exactly the returner the Falcons needed, routinely ensuring Atlanta had the ball around the 30 yard line on his kick returns and looking zippy and effective on punts. The only problem is that he got hurt, again.
- We were looking for in-game management progress from Raheem Morris and the staff, and I have to view the 2/2 on his first two challenges as that kind of progress. Even that third challenge was justified, given the importance of the moment and the fact that it was difficult to tell if Drake London had it. Morris let the Buccaneers burn a timeout before his first challenge and recognized the Pitts catch in the fourth quarter, giving Atlanta forward momentum. Handling the clock effectively and winning your challenges matter, and Morris gave us something encouraging in this game on that front after we (justifiably) questioned his judgement in 2024.
- We saw the concerns with this passing game come to life, despite the overall impression being positive. Michael Penix Jr. missed high targeting Drake London multiple times, players dropped passes that were in their hands, and the pass protection broken down often enough to force Penix into having to make plays on the run. The talent with Penix is obvious and I saw him shrug off at least two sacks yesterday en route to a number of impressive short-to-medium range throws, but drops and misfires were a problem past 15 yards, as our own Tre’Shon Diaz noted he went 0-for-7 on those passes. I see no reason to be down on Penix whatsoever after this week, but hopefully the consistency for him (and his receiving corps) arrives soon.
- About the receiving corps: While Penix simply missed a handful of times, I felt like it was not unreasonable to ask Atlanta’s receivers to reel in passes that were pretty on-target, and yet they did multiple times. As I said, I felt like it was a quality day overall for this group, but the drops (from London in particular) were kinda killer. Hodge has been a great player for this Falcons team, too, but his odd, not-looking-for-the-ball route at the end of the game on a would-be touchdown isn’t likely to earn him a longer look out there on offense.
- I honestly thought Elijah Wilkinson and the line held up reasonably well given the challenge, but they face the Vikings next week, and the late fade was a problem. Penix saw pressure throughout but mitigated it, but Wilkinson getting called twice for false starts and allowing an ugly pressure late marred his day. The Falcons have to figure out a way to block better for Penix to let him sit in the pocket where he’s most comfortable against more consistent pass rushes, and…
- …block better for the run game. We know that Robinson and Allgeier are much better than a combined 22 carries for 48 yards, but they had few opportunities to get rolling with the line scuffling mightily in front of them. The transition from Drew Dalman to Ryan Neuzil and from Kaleb McGary to Elijah Wilkinson was always going to be tough, but against a quality Bucs front playing better than they have the last couple times out against Atlanta, it was a quagmire on the ground for the Falcons. That lack of balance will kill this team if it continues, so it’s on the line and Zac Robins to find a better way forward.
- Repeatedly losing Baker Mayfield was deeply frustrating. The Falcons pass rush had moments were they were stonewalled, but more than that, they could not seem to keep Mayfield from taking off and managing impactful scrambles
- Ruke Orhorhoro made a young player’s mistake trying to make a big play, so I’m not going to beat him up too much for the roughing the passer call. But you can bet that a point of emphasis this week will be not putting hands on the quarterback once he’s already thrown the ball, given that a mistake of that caliber gave the Bucs 15 yards they needed to turn the next play into their final touchdown.
- I did not love Zac Robinson’s play calling after the initial drive, even if he and Penix cooked late. Too often, the Falcons were running into the teeth of an extremely capable Buccaneers run defense, leading to modest gains or nothing at all, and did not appear to have any ideas for mitigating the Bucs advantage and their blocking woes. The red zone decision-making, like having Bijan going way outside before he could move forward and resulting in a loss of three yards, was unfortunate. The short, no-hope passes when penalties piled up did and the down and distance was lengthy did the Falcons no favor. That in turn led to a poorly timed screen here on a critical down and a pass short of the sticks there, and surprisingly little work downfield for Kyle Pitts despite this Buccaneers secondary being vulnerable deep (at least on paper). Execution has to be blamed, too—Robinson can neither block nor force this team to avoid penalties and drops—but this still was not the offensive coordinator’s best effort.
- Time to overreact a bit: Younghoe Koo might lose his job at some point this season, something I really hoped we wouldn’t have to think about in 2025 and really, really hoped we wouldn’t be talking about after Week 1. The Falcons would have to be absolutely certain that they were going to stick with Lenny Krieg, their practice squad 17th player through the International Player Pathway program, if they make the shift, or know they have a more reliable option in free agency. But obviously Koo only hit two of his three tries, was lucky to bang home a 36 yarder after it bounced off the uprights earlier in the game, and missed from a manageable 44 yards (he’s now just 48/63 on 40-49 yard attempts, or 76%) on the game-tying attempt, which turned a would-be comeback into a sure loss, and it was little comfort that Bucs kicker Chase McLaughlin did the same thing. The fact that Koo also didn’t land a kickoff in the landing zone, resulting in favorable Bucs field position, was added salt on the wound even if I’m not at all certain why he’s kicking off when Bradley Pinon is available to do it. There’s no way the Falcons are abandoning him this early in the year and they will both rally around him and put him back out there for a pressure-packed kick if they need to under the bright lights next weekend. I just don’t know how many more misses he can afford in such a critical year.
Michael Penix Jr. for a gutsy, uneven effort on a day with relatively few standouts, but hopefully next time he puts together that kind of effort it results in a win. A couple more on-target passes and that stat line will be lighting up SportsCenter, after all.
The Falcons have much to iron out; the talent is evident but the execution and planning are uneven enough to ensure they will lose to quality teams if they don’t get that iron nice and hot.
It’s time for the Minnesota Vikings and Falcons to face off in primetime, a scary proposition that a Bears-Vikings game will either make more or less intimidating.
Theycanbebetterandtheymustbe.
