The Atlanta Falcons have perfected loss. They lose on the road and at home, in the United States and Europe. They lose in blowouts to the Miami Dolphins and squeakers to the New England Patriots. They lose in regulation and they lose in overtime. They lose after productive games give us hope and they lose well after hope has fled from our hearts. They simply lose, and if they aren’t quite the pitiful losers the Jets and Raiders are, they still do it in a fashion that’s incredibly painful and frequent enough to make them a losing football team. For eight years running, at this rate.
And make no mistake, that’s what they are. At 3-6, you’re talking about being able to maybe lose one more game to have a shot at the playoffs the rest of the way, the sort of improbability that borders on impossibility given how they’ve played in 2025. I’d love a miracle and Raheem Morris and company rubbing it in our faces, somehow, when we hit January. But I refuse to let myself even dream of something so unlikely after watching this team for nine weeks; as Terrin Waack with the Falcons noted yesterday, only ten teams have made the playoffs since 1993 with the record Atlanta has now.
And again, they lose. They are now 50-75 since the beginning of the 2018 season, the seventh-worst mark in the NFL over that span, with exactly no winning seasons or playoff appearances despite having three head coaches, two general managers, and a partridge in a pear tree in those eight seasons. The Falcons themselves are chronically incapable of viewing this team as anything but a fresh head coach or a big signing or an amazing draft pick away from being good enough to win the NFC South, which is part of the reason they’re so quick to crow whenever they win impressively once or twice in a given season and bristle so fiercely when the criticism arrives early on. You’ll see when it all works out, is the refrain, and then you’ll be sorry you doubted us. Those of us who have been slow to doubt and quick to hope have, unfortunately, paid a heavy price for being no better at learning our lessons than the Falcons themselves.
Take Sunday. Sunday was losing as an art form. The Colts tried to give the Falcons the game over and over again, and there were stretches where a play going this way or that way would have led to Atlanta having a chance at a blowout victory. Instead, they continually gave those chances away, going a hideous 0-13 on third downs, allowing long third downs to be converted by the Colts, and losing the field position battle owing to a serious of hilarious coverage misadventures on special teams. Bijan Robinson and Tyler Allgeier ran well, the pass rush was blistering, Drake London was awesome when targeted, Jessie Bates made a nice play in coverage, and the line held up remarkably well considering. Everything else was so-so-to-terrible, from Michael Penix Jr.’s accuracy to the run defense to the team’s fumble and injury luck. They sagged under the weight of their mistakes until they collapsed, an all-too-familiar story.
This was not a loss that would be embarrassing in a vacuum, given the quality of opponent and the brilliance of pieces of this team’s effort, but it’s the totality of the season and the fashion of the defeat that makes it so demoralizing. Darnell Mooney continued to drop catchable balls, Michael Penix Jr. once again picked up an intentional grounding call when he couldn’t afford to do so deep in a game, missed tackles and blown coverage hurt Atlanta, and the oft-reliable Bradley Pinion shanked a punt when the Falcons least wanted him to. These are the mistakes a team incapable of learning from those mistakes makes, and that particular shoe is a snug fit for Atlanta right now.
The Falcons will go from this brutal two-game stretch to facing the Panthers, Saints, and Jets in three straight weeks, the kind of games they have a very good chance at winning if they even just maintain their current deeply uneven level of play given the opponents. But we should be smart enough to be skeptical of this team even if they climb back to .500 and have a real shot at keeping that momentum going, given the rot this four-game losing streak has revealed. The shame is not in losing to very good teams in the Patriots and Colts; the shame is in losing in ways that are so familiar as to be a meme, with growth promised but rarely delivered upon. Until the Falcons stop losing and starting figuring out who they want to be and how they can consistently get there, the biggest mistake we can all make is expecting things to be any different than they have been the last seven years.
On to the full recap.
Bijan Robinson and Tyler Allgeier combined for a long-awaited terrific game. Both averaged over five yards per carry on the day, they put up over 130 yards in regulation alone, and Allgeier bulldozed his way for two touchdowns, getting to a career-high five rushing touchdowns in the process just nine games into the season. The duo was maddeningly underutilized earlier in the game, but nobody could seriously argue that they did anything less than what they needed to.
The flashes from Penix are what keep me from hitting the eject button this early in his career. All of the pieces of a terrific quarterback are in there, from the ability to escape pressure to the arm to the growing ability to layer throws in at different speeds and angles after he was throwing angry hornets on every play early on. The Drake London touchdown throw, the London low and behind throw to keep him from harm on a critical first down, and the on-point balls that Kyle Pitts and Darnell Mooney dropped combined with his scrambles away from pressure to extend plays to give the young quarterback something to build on. Unfortunately, we’ll get back to him later.
Drake London is so damn good. Big blocks, dogged route running no matter how long the play goes on, and strong hands combine to make him a force, as he was on back-to-back chunk plays in the first quarter for 30 and 13 yards. Then he outdid himself in the second quarter, making a big grab working against a slipping Sauce Gardner and then catching a beautiful rainbow pass from Penix for a touchdown. Few receivers are better in contested catch and red zone situations, and the Falcons need to remember to feed him in those situations to the exclusion of everything else.
I honestly thought the line held up impressively well, minus a couple of hiccups. Kyle Hinton stepped in and delivered, Chris Lindstrom looked good despite dealing with an injury, and the Falcons got the ground game rolling while giving Penix enough time to work.
That rookie pass rushing duo is looking promising as hell. For the second straight week, they got a strip sack, this time with James Pearce Jr. getting the sack to force it and Jalon Walker falling on it. Right before that, Walker had knocked the ball out of Jones’ hands to force a fumble Jones fell on. The two are disruptive, fast, and very good already; get Pearce working better on run downs and the Falcons will have something special for a very long time.
Zach Harrison’s return was welcome. His sack of Daniel Jones that led to a fumble—sadly one that rolled out of bounds—was a pure effort and awareness play as he came back to stonewall a scrambling Jones. He was also one of the few consistently impactful run defenders…again.
The pass rush overall has been the team’s great success story in 2025 and a feather in the caps of Jeff Ulbrich and Nate Ollie. They had seven sacks against Daniel Jones, forced multiple fumbles even if they didn’t recover them, and were aggressive and relentless in keeping him off-balance. Given the caliber of this offense, the fact that that Atlanta forced multiple turnovers and kept the Colts from dominating this game is a win, and so much of that was due to the pass rush.
Jessie Bates with a vintage read-it-all-the-way interception was encouraging. He’s been heating up the last two weeks, and any realistic comeback scenario for Atlanta features Bates being as good as he possibly can be.
I thought the fill-ins on defense did about as well as you could possibly expect; Keith Taylor in particular was good enough taking over for Mike Hughes taking over for Dee Alford that I’m feeling great about the cornerback depth even with Clark Phillips being a complete non-factor for this coaching staff. The strain was more keenly felt along the defensive line with arguably Atlanta’s two most reliable run stoppers out, but they kept the pass rush rolling.
Zane Gonzalez held off the kicker scaries for one week, hitting his two extra point tries and field goal attempt with minimal fuss. May he keep it up.
What has happened to Darnell Mooney? He has just 190 yards on 13 receptions in seven games, or under two grabs per game, and authored another absolutely brutal drop and a miss on a catchable leaping ball in this one. Last year, Mooney was a dynamic downfield threat who regularly punished teams for focusing overmuch on Drake London or Bijan Robinson, and this year he’s been such a non-factor that it’s been actively harmful to the offense. It’s fair to wonder if he’s more hurt than the team and player have let on, because it simply seems insane that he could’ve fallen off this much otherwise.
Kyle Pitts had played well enough this year that he had largely dodged the criticism that followed him the last three seasons, but that drop will re-ignite it. On first down with Penix hitting him in stride, Pitts just dropped an easy explosive reception that would have probably gone 20-30 yards easy, setting up the offense to fumble things away two plays later. You just can’t miss opportunities like that, and the fact that he didn’t fight as hard as you’d like for the underthrown Penix ball in the third quarter in the end zone. It just wasn’t his best day.
Ah, yes, the underthrown Penix ball. What makes me nervous about Penix is the number of mistakes that are familiar, with the third (!) intentional grounding penalty happening because he panicked late under pressure being as high on the list as the missed throws. Penix has an unreal arm and can deliver the ball exactly where it needs to go anywhere on the field, but too often he rushes his process and delivers something receivers have to work to get. He was victimized by bad drops that hurt his numbers today, but Penix also lingered too long at times looking to make something happen and then delivered off-kilter balls that imperiled drives, especially on the bad miss to an open David Sills late. It takes more than just poor quarterback play to go 0/13 on third downs, but Penix’s misses were a major part of the reason the Falcons did that on Sunday.
Zac Robinson can’t keep getting away with this, can he? The Falcons just went 0/13 on third downs, briskly strode away from the run on a couple key drives even though it was actually working, and consistently failed to find easy answers in the passing game. Robinson can’t make Pitts and Mooney catch well-placed balls or get Penix to nail the throws that he’s calling up, but he is the architect of an offense that has been embarrassingly bad on a drive-to-drive basis this year despite having enough talent to occasionally pull together something brilliant. The Falcons are 28th in scoring offense, 29th in third down conversion %, 26th in 4th down %, and 24th in red zone trips, illustrating that despite the presence of four top ten picks and plenty of investment along the offensive line, they’re one of the worst offenses in the league. There are real flaws that mitigates Robinson’s problems, but I’ve seen nothing this year to suggest that he’s going to be the guy to pull this Falcons team out of a tailspin.
The defense looked very unserious early on before they rallied to get a key fourth down stop, but that picked up again in a hurry. On a short field and then following Atlanta’s touchdown drive, the Colts needed a combined four plays to score two touchdowns, including a deep shot score to Alec Pierce where he went up over two defenders in the end zone. Further losses—Dee Alford and Sam Roberts exited the game—increased the degree of difficulty for Atlanta. They played admirably throughout this one, but the cracks showed when you had bad coverage mismatches and on the frankly hilariously bad run defense on Taylor’s 83 yard touchdown run caused in part by not having guys like LaCale London and Sam Roberts out there.
The run defense was horrendous. Horrendous! Jonathan Taylor is an all-world back, but he should not average over 7.5 yards per carry, put up over 240 0n the ground, and score three times. The Falcons have personnel issues that were exacerbated by the loss of Sam Roberts and LaCale London this week, but they have not been able to find answers even so to at least stop the bleeding, and that extended to Daniel Jones scrambling every which way as he wished. It sort of seems like only getting Divine Deablo back is going to prevent this from being the world’s ugliest run defense the rest of the way, which damns the front office and coaching staff in equal measure.
The tackling was just plain bad. I cringed at Tyler Warren slapping JD Bertrand around, Billy Bowman Jr. lunging for a tackle for a loss and missing entirely, and the number of times Jonathan Taylor either stiff-armed or simply ran through tackle attempts from linebackers and defensive backs alike. Kaden Elliss admitting the defense thought Jonathan Taylor was down on his long scamper and kind of gave up counts as the biggest missed tackle of them all.
Special teams coverage was an adventure all day, as it has been multiple times in 2025. The Falcons allowed two punt returns to clear the 50 yard line, the final kick return of the fourth quarter brought all the way back to midfield by Ameer Abdullah before Natrone Brooks made a game-saving tackle, and had multiple other quality returns called back owing to holding on the Colts. The Falcons need to win the field position battle consistently to win, and that has been a struggle this year; the fact that so many guys are missing tackles and taking bad angles when the bottom third of the roster is stocked with dedicated special teamers is troubling.
The Raheem Morris decision not to call a timeout late in the second quarter was divisive. I understand both perspectives on this one, which was less of an obvious bonehead call than we’ve seen from Morris in the past. The pro-timeout contingency argued that if you got a turnover on downs or turnover—as the team ultimately got with that Jessie Bates interception—you have a chance to tack on more points. The anti-timeout contingency argues that the Colts would have called a different play entirely with more time and may have been able to pilot themselves in field goal range. I lean toward the latter after sitting with it, but it’s fair to say Morris’s clock management has not earned the benefit of the doubt in Atlanta. I would also quibble with the timeout in the fourth quarter with the clock running down, the Colts with no timeouts, and a gotta have it field goal to tie things up; forcing the Colts to rush it might have led to a bad result. I do understand wanting the time to try to go win it with your offense, but then you need to call that timeout faster!
I do think Morris is in trouble in general. There was a bit of a disgruntled vibe in the post-game quotes I saw, and while some of that is inevitably taken out of context, Kaden Elliss saying the team “quit” on that huge Taylor run and Drake London responding to a question about third downs with a “I just run the routes that I got” comment is not exactly inspiring stuff. Players reiterated that the locker room is united, as reporter Miles Garrett noted, but a lot of losing can fracture even a strong group. That paired with Morris’s coordinator hires not panning out—Jimmy Lake last year, Robinson really the last two years over his body of work—and his often weird game management is enough to make an owner who wants to win question whether he can do so with this coach. Given that Blank has never let go of a coach after two years and injuries are piling up, I still think he survives 2025, but that confidence is being eroded on a weekly basis.
Every team suffers through injuries and the Falcons have done a poor job of weathering the storm, but in hindsight the injuries seem laser-targeted to blow up this season. Divine Deablo’s loss has destroyed the run defense and the team’s ability to handle tight ends alike, Kaleb McGary’s injury has had an outsized impact on the line from a run blocking perspective in particular, and Darnell Mooney’s injury woes have clearly played a role in him being a shadow of the player he was a year ago; now injuries to Sam Roberts, Mike Hughes, Dee Alford, and LaCale London are robbing the team of some of their strongest run defenders and coverage options. I’m putting this here not to imply the Falcons should get a pass—this injury list is short compared to, say, San Francisco’s—but because it has played a role in the ugliness of this season.
The Wrapup
With apologies to Tyler Allgeier after a great day, it was a pass rush that stopped drives, forced Daniel Jones into mistakes, and kept this one competitive throughout.
One Takeaway
The Falcons, as I have written multiple times this year, need everything to go just the way they want it to in order to win, especially against quality opponents. That’s not going to work most weeks.
Panthers redux, and a chance at revenge. After the Falcons got smoked 30-0 last time out, they need to show up.
Final Word
WhatmorecanIsay?