Every NFL season begins with a glimmer of hope, a flickering candle in the darkness that seems to show an open door. If you’re a good team, that light burns brighter and longer, and your confident steps forward carry you toward a destination you desire. If you’re a bad team, that light is quickly snuffed and you are plunged into umbra, and months are spent fumbling in the darkness looking for a latch that may not even exist.
The Atlanta Falcons saw their light snuffed on Sunday. I know that it’s a long
season, and the struggling Green Bay Packers are up next on a short week with Michael Penix Jr. potentially returning, and that the state of the NFC South means Atlanta is not out of it two weeks into the year. But I also know that 0-2 is a tough hole to climb out of, and that this Falcons team has to look like a completely different squad with a change at quarterback to see a reasonable way to climb to a winning season. They are already at the fumbling in the darkness stage, because things are bleak and I have not seen enough from this coaching staff or roster to assume they’re going to be able to clean up this mess quickly.
And it is a mess. The defense is game and clearly the best unit on the field, but they also allowed Xavier Legette to get behind them for a 55 yard gain, got eviscerated by Bryce Young to the tune of 287 yards and three touchdowns, and let Chuba Hubbard have a solid day on the ground. Special teams looks mediocre in terms of returns and coverage and alarming in terms of the kicking game, now that Nick Folk has missed three field goals in two weeks. And the offense is abysmal, with playmakers looking forlorn on the sideline as Cooper Rush and Jack Strand combined for five turnovers and three points, with Bijan and Brian Robinson doing as much as they could (123 yards on 27 carries, five catches for 25 yards) and London trying his damndest as the only real bright lights on a tough day. An improvement in quarterbacking play will lift this offense to competence, but the pass protection, the miscues, and the penalties suggest it’s going to take a lot of growth to make them better than that.
Bad luck and unimaginative planning got the Falcons to their current state at quarterback—you never sign a third quarterback expecting he’ll have to start the first two games of the season, but Penix and Tua were your top two options—but the rest can be hung on game plan and execution. The Falcons can’t (and won’t even try) to attack defenses deep, do not have a good plan for getting the ball to playmakers with those limitations, and are not getting the blocking to just run teams over. I would say the plan to keep Bryce Young in check was a good one—he was pressured at a very high rate, for example—but he repeatedly found open options because the secondary slipped up. And so on. This does not look like a team that has easy answers to adversity, to say the least.
What can the Falcons do? Keep going, obviously, because there’s no choice but to do so. But they also need to figure out quickly how to put together a coherent offense that can get them more than 16 points in two games, no matter who ends up being under center in a given week, and how to clamp down on the miscues that have led to defensive and special teams woes that cost them further. The team that just lost by 30-plus points to the Panthers for the second time in two seasons does not look any better under a new regime than it looked under the old one, and while I’ll grant you it takes time and the team’s true goal for contention seems very likely to be 2027, they did want to be fun and competent this year lest they completely lose a fanbase early on that has endured way too many losing seasons.
I don’t know what it will look like if the Falcons figure things out starting on Thursday Night Football against the Packers, but I do know that it won’t look anything like this. What I do know is that 0-3 with Atlanta’s schedule and Carolina and New Orleans actually looking like competent football teams probably will mean the lights are out on the 2026 season.
On to the full recap.
The Good
- Bijan Robinson looked awfully glum on the sidelines at the end of the game, and it’s difficult to blame him. He’s the player Atlanta counts on to make this thing go, and right now that job is too big for any one man to do. Still, Bijan averaged 4.5 yards on 16 carries and rushed for over 70 yards, doing his part despite being stymied regularly early for minimal gains thanks to subpar blocking.
- Brian Robinson Jr. is proving to be a nice second fiddle for Bijan, too. He looked decisive and powerful as a runner in this one, putting up 51 yards on 11 carries and doing his best work late when the game was out of hand. Atlanta’s likely to try to keep Bijan fresh when things go awry like this, but I’d trust Brian Robinson in short yardage and goal line situations…if the Falcons ever get into them.
- Drake London is relentless. Rush missed him badly at least once in the first half, but every catch he got was either a first down or a first down and a major gain. He easily finished as the team’s leading receiver with 51 yards on four grabs, but looked incredibly frustrated on the sideline at the end of the game (again, with justification) and simply isn’t getting enough from his quarterbacks to put up the monster lines he did last year. He needs Penix back in action.
- Za’Darius Smith is a playmaker. He split a sack in this one with Cameron Thomas—who also had a nice game, I should note—and also hit Bryce Young’s arm on a key third down to force an incompletion. Through two games, he’s been an impactful signing, something I expect to continue.
- Samson Ebukam and Gervon Dexter came up with a terrific second quarter sack of Bryce Young to decisively end a drive. On second and long, Young went backwards in an attempt to escape but Ebukam got his arm around him and he and Dexter drilled the quarterback to the ground to make it 3rd and 21. Carolina would try a short run and then punt.
- On a shakier day for the secondary, I thought Xavier Watts mostly played quite well. He forced a fumble, led the team in tackles, and more than once basically crossed the entire field to make a stop. It’s been a quiet start for Watts and Jessie Bates, who are expected to turn up some turnovers for Atlanta, but Watts is still having an impact.
- I wouldn’t say Jack Strand was good, but after the Falcons pulled some starters alongside Cooper Rush and he threw an unfortunate pick six that was tipped into the air, he looked more competent than I would’ve expected given that he was being thrust into game action in an impossible situation. He threw multiple balls too hard but did deliver some nice quick passes along the way, and as a runner he was very effective, picking up multiple first downs. I don’t want to see him again this season because it would imply we are firmly in football hell and because he’s not remotely ready to play extended action against good football teams, but there’s very obviously a backup quarterback worth developing here.
- The game did end! At varying points I was afraid it would not.
The Ugly
- Cooper Rush went for it on the very first offensive play of the game, scrambling away on play action for nine yards…but then put the ball on the ground at the end of the play and gave it right to Carolina. Rush had no need to dive for the first down, especially since he was short of the marker, and it was just another ill-advised decision from a quarterback who is very clearly over his head. He followed that up by hesitating for way too long on third down on the next drive, throwing it late and seeing the ball tipped and then picked off. The icing on the cake was an interception where he simply did not see Devin Lloyd in the third quarter, which set up a Panthers scoring drive that scrubbed out any final foolish hope for the team. Aside from a couple of decisive darts and a heroic effort on a first down scramble, he looked like a third-string quarterback pressed into action without the time and ability to make that work. I feel for Rush, who should not be in this situation and is clearly doing the best he can, but the best he can do is unfortunately not good at all.
- Of course, Strand looked like a rookie, too, even if the results were no worse than Rush’s. The pick six was not really his fault but was too risky a throw, and the comical fumble to end the game was just a case of sweaty hands or lost concentration that you can’t have. It was a gentle reminder that this is not a player who is ready to be out there playing a major role for Atlanta yet.
- I hear the outsized concern about the line, and while I’m not there yet given how difficult things are with Rush under center, I’m a little worried. Jake Matthews had his second straight tough game, the holding calls piled up, and especially early on there was not a ton of daylight for Bijan and Brian Robinson to work with. The icing on the cake was that both Rush and Strand had to deal with completely unblocked rushers on plays where that should not have been the case. If it continues, the Falcons have a very big problem on their hand and no obvious fixes, given that there are no secret superstar reserves to work with here.
- On fourth down and one yard, the best play the Falcons had in their bag was trickery that didn’t work at all. That is far too close to the Arthur Smith/Zac Robinson short yardage approach that we all hated for comfort, and an objectively terrible play call when Carolina had been keying on the run and you only have a yard to go.
- The fact that Atlanta allowed Xavier Legette, who has had a deeply mediocre career to this point, to get wide open for a 55 yard gain near the end of the first half when the Falcons desperately needed a stop is extremely galling. Legette simply beat Mike Hughes and Jessie Bates was late to arrive, and Hughes’ solid first week of action faded into memory on that play. The entire secondary was just not up to the task against an admittedly talented group of Carolina pass catchers, though C.J. Henderson had his moments filling in for A.J. Terrell. .
- Nick Folk missed his third field goal attempt in two weeks, and if he’s fully cooked, Atlanta’s already potent woes become unbearable because they haven’t even been able to get into the red zone thus far. Folk’s miss on Sunday was bad enough to question everything.
- The handling of the quarterback situation was worryingly clumsy. Rush was playing terrible football throughout the first half, but the Falcons left him in there out of the break regardless and let him throw his second interception of the game before finally yanking him in favor of Jack Strand, who had to come in pretty cold in the middle of a game that was 27-3. On one hand that took the pressure off of him, but on the other hand it was beyond obvious that Rush was not going to find another gear with how tentative and lackluster he had been to that point. I don’t think the Falcons can start Rush again even if Penix and Tua aren’t ready to go, because I think they’ll once again be forced to toss Strand to the wolves partway through a game instead of letting him get out there at a more logical time.
The Wrapup
Game MVP
One of those weeks where I don’t think you can give one out, frankly.
One Takeaway
This team desperately needs better quarterbacking but has a raft of problems that aren’t going to get fixed overnight on top of that.
Next Week
Thursday Night Football against the Green Bay Packers, which means not time for the team or us to recover.
Final Word
Amiserableexperience.
