The Atlanta Falcons like things to go smoothly, but when they don’t, they often struggle to look like a competent NFL team. Faced with a well-coached 49ers team that was intent on taking away the run, rattling Michael Penix Jr., and running the ball down Atlanta’s throats, the Falcons appeared to be daydreaming about a Buffalo Bills Monday night football game where everything went just the way they wanted it to. By the time they woke up, the game was lost.
I don’t mean to put this over-dramatically,
but if you don’t look at it in that prism, the game plan made zero sense. The Falcons couldn’t get those deep sideline shots going on a consistent basis, but they didn’t adapt to that by consistently targeting their running backs out of the backfield and working the middle of the field, trying to get the ball out of Michael Penix Jr.‘s hands quickly and relying on an athletic set of blockers to create space to work. Instead, they shied away from the run early and were forced to shy away from it late, relying on passing plays that developed too slowly for a rattled Penix working behind an offensive line that couldn’t give him time to work. Penix seemed to want to live on the sidelines, the team seemed to want to oblige, and The result? Just 10 points, six of those predictably coming on a Bijan Robinson touch, in the form of a screen pass. Execution ensured the plan in place had no chance of working, but once it became evident how San Francisco was going to try to stymie this offense, the Falcons simply let it happen.
There was no way the Falcons were going to win this game scoring ten points, so what the defense did almost seems like an afterthought. But again, Atlanta wanted to be the team that consistently put pressure on Mac Jones and forced him into mistakes, and that worked for a while. When San Francisco essentially abandoned the pass and the Falcons lost Divine Deablo, forcing them to rely on JD Bertrand at inside linebacker, their run defense was sorely tested. They failed that test utterly, something I feared all season long and was largely spared from, but Kyle Shanahan is simply too smart to put the game on Mac Jones’ arm when he doesn’t have to. Instead, Christian McCaffrey ran for 129 yards and two touchdowns on 24 carries, and Mac Jones went a pedestrian 17/26 for 152 yards and an interception. The Falcons pass defense held up yet again, but it was partly because it was not tested that heavily.
None of this factors in the Falcons running a 4th and 1 sideline pass play with no Bijan Robinson in the game and out of shotgun, allowing a 3rd and 13 conversion with only 10 players on the field, getting called for 12 men on the field, or picking up yet another delay of game, all of which should have this coaching staff enduring some awkward conversations at Flowery Branch. That many obvious coaching mistakes in one game, when the Falcons were seemingly on their way to ironing some of them out, put a few more nails in a particularly airtight coffin.
The Falcons, in other words, turned in their latest in a long line of letdown performances after putting together a win or two. They seemed unprepared for the 49ers to do what the 49ers do best, something that is equal parts infuriating and dispiriting. That lays at the feet of the coaching staff, but a genuinely bad night from the defensive front seven and offensive line might have doomed a better game plan, too. These Falcons just didn’t look like they were going to win this one from the first drive, and while they threatened a couple of times, even the threats felt a little hollow.
Contrast that to the 49ers. Coming into the game with George Kittle finally healthy, which gave them a significant boost on the ground, San Francisco nonetheless had a laundry list of injuries that would have doomed a lesser team. I suggested last week that the sheer amount of talent the 49ers had bled meant the Falcons would have a number of tasty matchups, but Kyle Shanahan and Robert Saleh worked overtime to prevent Atlanta from enjoying any of them. They were disciplined against the run, so consistent in their pressure that Michael Penix Jr. struggled, and both willing and able to force the Falcons into uncomfortable boxes by daring them to run inside and throw to the middle of the field. Offensively, they mostly took what Atlanta’s defense gave them through the air, using that as an occasional complement to an endless diet of Christian McCaffrey touches that the Falcons couldn’t stop. They had to be prepared and execute extremely well to beat the Falcons the way they did—a 10 point win that saw them neutralize nearly all of Atlanta’s real strengths—and they were and they did.
Ultimately this is a primetime road loss against a quality (if incredibly injured) football team, with the schedule set to lighten up a bit from here on out; we’d be remiss to assume this is going to start a spiral. But after the ugly but close Buccaneers loss, the inexplicable Panthers blowout, and this game where the Falcons couldn’t do what they knew coming in had to be done, expect more inconsistency where this team looks utterly brilliant one week and thoroughly mediocre the next. It’s not about what this team is capable of—they are capable of terrific things, talented and still improving—but what they can consistently deliver. As has been the case for a long, long time, it looks like what they can deliver is around .500 ball, and so we should plan to continue to live and die by the inconsistency that has come to define this franchise. If they have an argument against that, they ought to start making it now.
On to the full recap.
The Good
- Kyle Pitts bounced back in a big way in this one. The yards per reception average was tiny, but Pitts consistently made tough grabs in traffic and had one nice first down called back owing to a penalty on Elijah Wilkinson, finishing with seven catches (the team lead) for 62 yards (second to Darnell Mooney’s 68). The strong hands, awareness, and reliability are a big deal for Penix to be able to rely on, and we need this to be a weekly thing.
- Zac Robinson decides he’s not going to feed Bijan Robinson, and sometimes that works. Often when it doesn’t work, he continues to stubbornly lean on the pass for a bit, and then is forced to go back to one of humanity’s ancient truths: Bijan Robinson works. After a quiet first half, the Falcons force-fed Bijan on their first drive of the third quarter, and predictably he had some nice runs and turned back-to-back screen passes into big gains and a touchdown. You can’t build the entire offense out of Bijan, but you can build most of it out of Bijan, and you should.
- Penix is the perfect quarterback for this deeply inconsistent team because he is inconsistent. But man, when he stands in and delivers, he can put together some impressive stretches. He should have had Mooney for another deep ball late that would have given Atlanta a slim chance, and Penix absolutely lasered in some passes to Pitts, Bijan, and Drake London on the day. Hopefully he can do so more consistently in the weeks to come.
- Leonard Floyd had a nice day at the office. He blew into the backfield to force Christian McCaffrey to lose yards in the second quarter and followed that up by hitting Mac Jones and forcing a weird pass that went for a couple of yards to an offensive lineman, setting up a field goal try on a drive where the 49ers could’ve had an easier shot at the end zone.
- Zach Harrison is a monster. He had a sack, a couple of really impressive runs tops, and consistently disrupted San Francisco’s best-laid plans. If anyone’s going to start getting a larger role on this line at the expense of others, it should be Harrison, who along with Ruke Orhorhoro has been a fairly consistent force for good.
- Pressure was inconsistent, but as has been the case all year, when it was close it forced mistakes. Mac Jones threw an interception, threw it out of bounds, and missed when the Falcons had him feeling the heat, the kind of result Atlanta has to be encouraged by. They just have to keep that rolling against lesser offenses.
- Kaden Elliss’s interception required a lot of concentration, quick thinking, and sticky hands, and he did all of the above. That should have been a game-changing play, and I’m bummed out it was not.
- Jamal Agnew had a rough day overall, with a couple of returns that he had no shot of returning and a muffed kickoff, but that blazing fast return past the 50 was just what the Falcons were hoping for when they signed him. It’s no coincidence that their lone touchdown drive was fueled by that, and the hope is that Agnew and his blocking can find enough consistency to put the Falcons past the 35 regularly.
- The secondary got in on the missed tackle party, but the coverage was pretty consistent. Mike Hughes recovered on a Jones deep ball to help cause an incompletion, but the more consistent good was that Atlanta kept San Francisco’s receivers off the stat sheet. In total, they tallied just seven catches for 60 yards, and if you give the 49ers game plan credit for a lot of that, the Falcons still did a nice job of taking away that aspect of their offense.
- He can’t always get it just the way he wants it, but when Bradley Pinion hits a punt at just the right angle, good things happen. His late third down punt landed and bounced inside the five yard line, and KhaDarel Hodge (who else?) did the rest to down it and pin San Francisco deep. That led to the 49ers winding up a drive that got a couple of first downs and then fizzled well short of a scoring opportunity.
The Ugly
- Michael Penix Jr. has to start playing better under pressure, or teams are going to sell out to tee off on him. Throughout the first half, Penix would be forced to move and would either amble for a couple of yards (and usually try to throw it at the end of the play) or toss it away, a habit that cost him big-time before the half with the Falcons driving after a pair of beautiful throws and catches. He didn’t leave the tackle box and tried to throw it away, resulting in an intentional grounding call that ran ten seconds off the clock and led to the half ending, given that there were only ten seconds left. I appreciate not taking costly sacks, but the alternative of getting anxious and launching off-target throws or picking up a penalty is not considerably better. Per Tori McElhaney, Penix was 0/9 under pressure, the greatest number of passes without a completion since 2023 and a pretty big indictment of his game last night. When he was kept clean, McElhaney notes, he was 21/29 for 242 yards and his touchdown pass to Bijan.
- By the end of the game, of course, it would be difficult to argue with a straight face that Penix had much of a prayer of doing anything, given how quickly and frequently he was taking big hits. We have to hope the fact that he looked banged up at the end of this one is not going to impact his availability for Week 8.
- I swear Darnell Mooney has dropped a deep ball in each game he’s appeared in thus far in 2025, and the one that went right through his hands in this one was a back breaker. As he gets healthier, Mooney should once again be a real asset for this offense, and we saw glimpses of it on Sunday night. He just can’t miss opportunities like that.
- The offensive line’s troubles had been limited in the early going, but they showed up against San Francisco. Elijah Wilkinson struggled badly, Jake Matthews had a little trouble working on a balky ankle, and the entire line simply allowed too much pressure on Penix, which led to the struggles described above. Given the pressure and the lack of consistent pop in the running game—Bijan barely looked like Bijan running the ball, given that he he had so little room to work—I think you could make the case that this was the worst game of the year for the offensive line, and I would personally nod along. We can’t just pin the offense’s struggles on Zac Robinson or Penix when the line is the linchpin of the whole thing and they very obviously fell down throughout this one, though obviously they share real blame. Storm Norton’s hopefully impending return may see him pressed into action to relieve Wilkinson, especially if struggles continue against Miami.
- The run defense has been a little shaky, but teams didn’t have the blocking, backs, or will to press the issue through the first six weeks. It also helped that Divine Deablo could clean up a lot of mistakes, but when he left the game with an injury, things rapidly went south for Atlanta. Christian McCaffrey and Brian Robinson Jr. combined for 100 yards on 17 carries in the first half, with McCaffrey supplying 76 of those, and the 49ers would have run up the score massively had it not been for a tipped interception and pressure that forced an early end to drives. McCaffrey just kept rumbling in the second half, and you can bet that other teams will be looking at this game and deciding to lean on a run-first game plan until the Falcons make them pay for it.
- I don’t want to be dismissive, because JD Bertrand is a player the Falcons like and has clear value on special teams, but he cannot be your starting option if Divine Deablo has to miss time. He delivered a handful of nice tackles on McCaffrey late, but before that his evening was defined by poor angles, coverage lapses, and missed tackle opportunities; he simply doesn’t have the ability right now to step into this lineup and hold up. The Falcons are sorely missing Troy Andersen at the moment.
- This team looked poorly coached this week. They missed tackles, picked up costly penalties including a pair of illegal men downfield, and once again failed to get a play off on a critical third down, resulting in a delay of game. Then there was the comical, indefensible 12 men on the field to give the 49ers yet another first down they didn’t need in the fourth quarter. There were 10 players on the field on 3rd and 13! Nobody wants to ride the roller coast with praise and damnation on a weekly basis, but you also have to call it like you see it, and the Falcons shot themselves in the foot a lot against the 49ers in deeply unnecessary fashion. The coaching staff is supposed to get those ironed out so they don’t pop up once or twice a month in bunches, as they did Sunday night, and it’s fair to say the Falcons aren’t going to turn the corner until that happens. Raheem Morris and Zac Robinson in particular really do not want extra scrutiny for these errors, given the farmer’s record to this point and the latter’s spot under the microscope to begin with.
- Consistent misfires on offense are on a bunch of people—Michael Penix for missing throws and getting shaky under pressure, the offensive line for poor blocking—but Zac Robinson certainly did not help things. There was the decision to come onto the field in shotgun on 4th and 1 with the Falcons within field goal range with no Bijan on the field, resulting in a sideline pass that was broken up, and the sheer number of Bijan-less, pass-heavy looks in the first half. The Falcons just couldn’t take advantage of an injured San Francisco defense with obvious weaknesses in the secondary and over the middle of the field, and I pin a lot of that on Robinson showing up with a plan that hardly seemed optimized for the opponent.
The Wrapup
Game MVP
I don’t know if you can really give one out in this one; nobody was truly spectacular. Bijan Robinson probably deserves it for still being the best part of the offense, but he can share a tepid trophy with Kyle Pitts for his consistent effort.
One Takeaway
A lack of consistency continues to define this football team. They can’t do the things they have to do well on a consistent basis, and that means some weeks they look brilliant and some weeks they look utterly lost. Unfortunately, this was the latter.
Next Week
The dismal Dolphins are up next. The Falcons badly need a get-right game again after a tough loss, and will have to hope they can continue to submarine Miami’s fortunes.
Final Word
Inconsistency.
