Great teams tend to be able to weather attrition and adversity. The Kansas City Chiefs can lose their #1 receiver for the equivalent of a full season owing to injury and suspension, lose their left tackle for multiple weeks, and still put together a winning effort owing to depth and strengths that compensate for those losses. The Philadelphia Eagles can absorb down weeks from any one of a half-dozen stars and still be competitive. The Chargers can lose both starting tackles and still take care of business, the Rams can power through the loss of Puka Nacua, and the Buccaneers can suffer waves of injury and still grit through tough wins. There are losses so deep no team can overcome them—often at quarterback—but in general contenders contend through rough waters.
The Falcons are not, at the moment, contenders, to say nothing of a great team. Early on, they weathered significant injuries to the likes of Kaleb McGary, Storm Norton, A.J. Terrell, and Billy Bowman Jr. successfully owing to strong fill-in performances from Elijah Wilkinson and Dee Alford. The more time that goes on, the more those players are (understandably) struggling to maintain a high level of play, though Alford can at least give you that in any given week. Injuries and unforeseen troubles that have cropped up at wide receiver and inside linebacker, meanwhile, have revealed Atlanta’s lack of both depth and adaptability in a way that has derailed a once-promising season.
Let’s take a look at what I mean by that by looking closer at the injuries and personnel failures the team has had to contend with, and then a bit of a dive into the way the coaching staff has been exacerbating personnel problems.
Cornerback
Last year was very clearly the outlier for Dee Alford, who was targeted 102 times and allowed 76 receptions for over 700 yards and eight touchdowns. Freed from Jimmy Lake’s defense, Alford is back to being a perfectly serviceable nickel cornerback who plays like a high-end starter for stretches. Coming into Week 9, he had allowed just 88 yards on 21 targets and 11 receptions, with a couple of bad angles, missed tackles, and penalties serving as the only blemishes on a very strong year. He allowed 88 yards on three catches against the Patriots, which will be concerning if it proves to be more than a blip.
Still, Alford is the team’s obvious depth success story after the Falcons ultimately didn’t allow his rough 2024 to scare them away from bringing him back. The fact that he’s served as the team’s top reserve both outside and inside gives him genuine value.
Defensive front
The other area in which the Falcons have unquestionably weathered the storm effectively is along their defensive line and in their edge group, where injuries to Ta’Quon Graham, Zach Harrison, Bralen Trice, and (in Week 9) Leonard Floyd have tested their depth.
There have been some shakier efforts, but the work the Falcons front office has put in to stock the cupboard here has really paid off. Harrison is excellent when healthy, LaCale London has proven to be an excellent rotational piece after being scooped up from the XFL, Sam Roberts a stout run defender poached off the Panthers practice squad, and Arnold Ebiketie, Jalon Walker, James Pearce Jr., Brandon Dorlus, Ruke Orhorhoro all promising, useful players in the here and now who came from the draft. The Falcons have been able to rotate heavily and weather losses because of that, and you have to give the team kudos for building their strongest group in many years.
Right tackle
Elijah Wilkinson was in a tough spot. Called upon to play right tackle, a position he had not manned on a full-time basis in years, Wilkinson was the third man up and thus was destined to be under scrutiny at right tackle. Given the difficulty of the ask and his early success, Wilkinson deserves real praise for answering the call the way he has, and I want to say that up front. It is not the player’s fault the Falcons have had to rely so heavily on him, and the fact that they had someone capable of stepping in after losing option #1 and option #2 is worth something.
Predictably, though, the cracks have been showing. Wilkinson has been Atlanta’s worst regular in pass protection, surrendering 27 pressures (two more than Chris Lindstrom, who is feeling the strain, too), has been penalized a line-high six times, and has been hit or miss run blocking.
Storm Norton should be back soon, and I don’t fault Atlanta’s team-building here so much as unfortunate circumstances.
Inside linebacker
This is the spot where I really fault Atlanta’s team-building, which was negligent at best.
The Falcons had signed Divine Deablo to compete for a starting job—in retrospect, he was always going to win it—with Troy Andersen next to Kaden Elliss. The hope was that the loser would provide Atlanta with high-end depth, something they would need if Andersen won because of his extensive injury history. But when Andersen simply was not healthy yet again, he hit the Physically Unable to Perform (PUP) list on July 24. We had no idea how long he would be out for, but I’m willing to bet $5 that the team had a much better idea, and this is where the trouble started.
Because the team had to know that Andersen might miss significant time, the smart move was to sign veteran help during training camp or the preseason, and to closely monitor cuts to see who might become available. Instead, the team worked through the summer with special teamers and undrafted free agents duking it out with incumbents like JD Bertrand and Josh Woods, with converted safety Ronnie Harrison proving to be the only signing of consequence. What that meant, practically speaking, was that the Falcons would be counting on a special teamer to fill in if injury hit Deablo or Elliss.
The evident problem, once the dust settled, is that the Falcons had two guys on the roster who had struggled mightily as full-time options. Bertrand filled in last year and was horrendous in coverage while being passable against the run and as a pass rusher, while Woods had been one of the league’s worst regulars in his lone long starting stint with the Cardinals a few years back. The team had to be able to take off the blinders, given their oft-stated fondness for Bertrand in particular, and realize they were one injury away from blowing a hole open in middle of the defense.
They did nothing. Harrison is obviously a contingency plan who will get more time, but his play in Week 9 suggests he’s only a modest upgrade over Bertrand. The Falcons had well over a month between Andersen’s PUP designation and the start of the season to add an experienced, proven player to this group to ensure the dropoff was not catastrophic, and they declined to do so. That represents a lack of imagination and, if we’re being honest, a level of naive belief in Andersen’s recovery and Bertrand’s ability that has proven to be beyond costly.
Here’s an eye-opening statistic on that front. Bertrand is fifth on the team in yards allowed in coverage (127) and tied for second in touchdowns (2). Everyone ahead of him on that list has played seven or eight games; Bertrand has appeared in three.
Wide receiver
This is the other spot where the Falcons’ roster construction failed mightily. You all know that I was obnoxious throughout the spring and summer about the team’s WR4 and beyond, arguing that the team was opening themselves up to real troubles given the lack of experience, proven ability, and so forth down the depth chart. The counterpoint to that argument from many Falcons fans was that WR4 would barely play, that the top three receivers were coming off a great season, and that they had some promising options. But my concern all along was that McCloud would not enjoy a second straight career season, that Mooney might miss time given that he’s only played one 17 game season in the NFL, and that nobody among the many options Atlanta assembled had a proven track record of handling a high volume of targets except DJ Chark, who didn’t work out.
Nobody could have seen McCloud’s exit from the team coming, so it’s hard to beat Atlanta up too much for that. But the Falcons knew that Mooney had a potentially serious shoulder injury around the same time they put Andersen on PUP, and while they had plenty of options in camp, they did not appear to seriously consider what might happen if Mooney missed multiple games and was limited when he did return. Instead, they stocked their depth chart with special teamers (KhaDarel Hodge, Jamal Agnew), a semi-promising young possession receiver (Casey Washington), and a journeyman veteran (David Sills) and hoped for the best.
How has that worked out? Well…
With the advantage of hindsight, this was extremely easy to see coming, again minus the McCloud situation. Before the team cut him, McCloud was getting fewer targets because Michael Penix Jr. is not Kirk Cousins, with the inevitable regression settling in. But Washington, Sills, and to a lesser extent Hodge have been infrequently targeted and have not been able to make much of the passes headed their way, winnowing the offense down to Drake London, Kyle Pitts, and Bijan Robinson to an extent that has hurt Atlanta’s offense. This isn’t all on those receivers, obviously, but your three top depth options having a combined 78 career catches (64 of those from Hodge) was never ideal.
As I write this, the Falcons have just cut Parker Romo and signed Zane Gonzalez. That’s the second time this year they’ve made a switch at a position that was defined by its stability from 2010-2023, with the only real hiccups in that stretch coming from injuries and Matt Bryant’s fade at the end of his career. But as you’d suspect from the fact that the team has had to make a switch twice, they really screwed this up, too.
It began with Koo. The Falcons signed Lenny Krieg to compete for the kicking job, but it became evident over the summer that they considered him more of an option for their International Player Pathway program spot on the practice squad than a true competitor. Koo looked to these eyes like he was a little shaky over the summer after he was hurt and really shaky throughout 2024, sparking some concern that he wasn’t facing real competition for his job.
That came back to bite the Falcons very quickly. In Week 1, the team got in field goal range for Koo to try a 44 yard kick and he missed, falling to the ground in agony and disbelief in a moment that was extremely painful to watch. The fact that the kick cost the Falcons a shot at overtime after Raheem Morris had repeatedly gone to bat for him throughout the summer made it clear that Koo was not long for the team, and he was swiftly replaced by Romo. Reliable for the Vikings a year ago, Romo nailed all five field goal tries against the Vikings and promptly missed two against the Panthers, casting doubt on his own reliability. Romo kept the job in subsequent weeks but sliced more than one of his field goal tries a little close to the uprights for comfort, with the Falcons ultimately signing Ben Sauls to the practice squad in the name of competition.
It was clear that Romo was, like Koo before him, on thin ice. Kicker is a hard position to get right in the NFL, especially when you have to shift away from a reliable stalwart, so I understand the hesitation to make a shift to some extent. But there are always proven options out there, and the Falcons had Sauls and Krieg on the practice squad to push him, meaning the team could have done what they weren’t capable of doing with Koo and making a shift before disaster struck. Instead, they had Romo kicking the decisive extra point against the Patriots and he missed badly on it, dooming the Falcons to yet another hard-fought loss. That led to Gonzalez taking over two days later.
Kicker is a position the Falcons have consistently failed to be rational about in recent years; they brought back Bryant when he was clearly no longer capable of his previous legendary reliability out of nostalgia and panic when Giorgio Tavecchio didn’t work out and Raheem Morris was talking about “emotional bank accounts” with Koo when it seemed obvious his own run was coming to an end. It should not have taken these two kickers outright losing games—though they were obviously not the only factor there!—for a change to take place, but it did.
Lack of adaptability has hurt, too
Ultimately, it’s easy to point the finger at the individual players messing up, given that they are very visibly doing so. But this is really on the coaching staff and front office for putting those players out there, especially with a lack of adjustment.
Take Bertrand. After the 49ers game, where he looked slow to react but did not torpedo the defense, it should have been readily evident to this team that having him play every snap as a starter was unwise. Jeff Ulbrich, who has done a terrific job outside of a small handful of situations like this, suggested as much when Divine Deablo was injured and he floated the idea of a true committee. Instead, the Falcons had Bertrand back out there on 68 of a possible 69 snaps against Miami, when he did almost single-handedly sink the defense by allowing a team-high eight receptions for a team-high 78 yards and team-high two touchdowns, chipping in two missed tackles and a lot of bad angles.
It was too late to enact the committee at that point, but the Falcons belatedly did so last week against the Patriots, trotting out Ronnie Harrison for the lion’s share of snaps. On Bertrand’s still-inexplicable 30 snaps, including the fateful final third down where he was beaten in coverage, he allowed three of four passes thrown his way to go for 40 yards, the second-highest total on the team, and over the past two years now has allowed 28/31 passes headed his way to be completed for 263 yards. Bertrand is a known, massive liability in coverage even if he’s a special teams asset and occasional asset against the run, and yet the Falcons have not tried to get him off the field on third downs in favor of, say, DeMarcco Hellams, a name Ulbrich brought up as a potential piece of the committee. That has proven to be costly three straight weeks in a row, which not coincidentally have been losses.
Or take the receiver group. Zac Robinson has stubbornly deployed 11 personnel, which includes three receivers, on 53.35% of offensive snaps despite the Falcons having Casey Washington as WR2 and David Sills as WR3 for long stretches. Per SumerSports, their EPA per play in that formation is -34, which is the 27th-best mark in the league, only ahead of the Vikings and putrid Raiders, Browns, Saints, and Titans when using that personnel grouping. They’ve been far more successful on a limited number of snaps with both Bijan Robinson and Tyler Allgeier on the field, and quite a bit more successful with two tight ends, typically Kyle Pitts and Charlie Woerner. That is especially true on third and fourth downs, when the Falcons have a heavy pass rate with three receivers on the field, at least one of which is not a realistic option to get the ball on any given play.
Having Allgeier on the field at the same time as Bijan opens up doubt about whether Allgeier is going to run or Bijan is going to catch a pass, while two tight ends gives Atlanta more blocking help while still keeping Atlanta’s only two productive receivers on the field alongside either Robinson or Allgeier, both of whom are legitimate options as receivers and in pass protection. Personnel groupings are not going to fix all this team’s woes, but the complete lack of blocking and pass catching production from Sills and lack of receiving production from Washington mean having three receivers on the field right now is very rarely a good idea. The team’s best groupings are the ones that put their best players on the field; right now, that has to be Allgeier, Woerner, or even Feleipe Franks over Sills and Washington. The fact that Robinson has been unwilling to adjust his tendencies despite evidence that they are not working speaks to an inability to adapt, something he’s been sharply criticized for throughout his tenure in Atlanta.
What separates the Falcons from better football teams is not just talent; Atlanta has plenty on this roster. It is the way the Falcons have allowed certain positions to go neglected, the bad luck and lack of foresight that have combined to turn those positions into major trouble spots, and the coaching staff’s struggles to overcome those weaknesses (and others, of course) with imagination, decisive action, and experimentation.
In a league where razor-thin advantages and split seconds can separate good teams from struggling ones, it’s no exaggeration to say the Falcons have cost themselves games by falling down in these specific areas. For all the good work and foresight we’ve seen in the defensive front, at cornerback, and even to some extent along the offensive line, the Falcons failed to meaningfully address their depth at a few key positions and hoped they wouldn’t have to reckon with the fallout from that. Instead, poor fortune has unearthed those weaknesses for the world to see and the team’s lack of ability to solve them is on full display, and now the 3-5 Falcons have to figure out a way to prevent those weaknesses from helping to completely sink the 2025 season.