We assumed we knew this story. There were brilliant moments, stellar individual performances, and stretches where it looked like Atlanta would cruise to an unlikely win. Then it seemed that they were undone by the same errors that have cropped up all season, fresh waves of penalties, and failures by players the Falcons have been forced to count on when the team needed them most.
We won’t write the epitaph for this season, lost as it is, without mention of the Falcons losing repeatedly because of all
the shots they fired into their own cleats. For one glorious night, however, all that self-inflicted damage couldn’t kill Atlanta, and a close game that seemed destined to go against them instead ended with Zane Gonzalez’s kick squeaking in through the left upright, propelling the Falcons to a 29-28 victory. It was hard to believe it had happened even with the evidence right in front of our eyes, but Atlanta played spoiler against a cratering Buccaneers team despite setting a franchise record for penalties. Bewildering, and an upending of an all-too-familiar story I blessedly did not have to write.
It was a team win that was nearly a team loss, but Kirk Cousins, Bijan Robinson, Kyle Pitts, and David Sills did a ton of heavy lifting. Despite a nasty drop we’ll discuss later, Sills put together his most productive game in Atlanta, with six receptions for 78 yards. Bijan had a rough fumble—again—but put up 175 combined yards and a touchdown, turning a bunch of nothing there plays into significant gains. Cousins missed some throws and nearly fumbled away the game at the end when he was sacked and stripped from behind, but continued to be Tampa Bay’s bogeyman by carving up their secondary most of the evening to the tune of 373 yards and three touchdowns. And Pitts had a career night where he looked like a kaiju towering over frantic Buccaneers defenders, outrunning, outjumping, and outworking the secondary all night to the tune of 11 catches, 166 yards, and three touchdowns.
The defense got in on the fun in fits and starts, too, with the pass rush cooking up five sacks and several errant Baker Mayfield throws; James Pearce Jr. set the franchise rookie record for sacks by getting his 7th and 8th, surpassing Mike Green’s 1983 total. Dee Alford atoned for a tough night from the secondary by picking off Mayfield, a critical turnover that quite literally saved the game, and the run defense largely put the brakes on a very talented group that includes Bucky Irving and Rachaad White.
All of these heroics were necessary because this was still very much a 2025 Falcons game, something no one should have any illusions about. Atlanta committed a franchise-record 19 penalties, their highest single game total ever and the highest league-wide since 2019, and had a costly fumble, a number of nasty coverage lapses, and even Zane Gonzalez goofing up a kickoff and giving Tampa Bay quality field position. They avoided the truly backbreaking errors in the end, but they were very recognizably the sloppy, error-prone, confounding team they’ve been all year. If Arthur Blank was leaning toward keeping the band together, perhaps this is a proof point in favor of that outcome; he should not be under any illusions that this team turned a corner or figured things out in a way that’s likely to translate to next week, much less next year. The Falcons will have to do a lot more to prove that there’s something to build on here, but they were resilient and tough for one game in a way that’s difficult not to appreciate.
And hey, so what? We watch these games to enjoy ourselves and hopefully see wins, and with the playoff dream entirely dead, getting to watch the creamsicle Buccaneers melt while Atlanta willed their way to victory despite facing a 3rd and 28 and then 4th and 14 was ultimately the sort of fun we’ve rarely had watching this team. The big decisions aren’t ours to make and are reportedly set to wait regardless; in the here and now the Falcons may have just completely derailed a rival’s season while putting together a performance that made history in ways both good and bad. Enjoy it; we may or may not see another win this year, we will almost certainly not see a game this bonkers, and the season is almost over regardless.
On to the full recap.
The Good
- Kirk Cousins loves playing the Buccaneers, and they can’t seem to solve him. Hanging in there to deliver sharp passes throughout the night, Cousins showed a knack for finding the open man and destroyed that Tampa Bay secondary throughout the first half. He cooled considerably early in the second half, missing some throws and looking a bit rattled after the David Sills drop in particular, but the heat came back on when it had to and Cousins willed the Falcons down the field for the win, including a pair of gutsy, accurate passes on 3rd and 28 and 4th and 14. We’re not getting this Cousins every week and he’s probably not returning to Atlanta in 2026 given his contract situation, but he’s going to go down as one of the Buccaneers’ worst nemeses regardless, and he added over 350 passing yards and three touchdowns to his total on a stellar night.
- Kyle Pitts has long seemed like he’s destined to head elsewhere when his contract is up, but perhaps tight end and team will come to an accord after this year has given both sides something to think about. In this one, Pitts was every bit the dominant top target the Falcons envisioned he could be when they drafted him all the way back in 2021, outrunning and outhustling defenders repeatedly for big gains and two touchdowns in the first half alone. He got hot again in the fourth quarter, racking up more catches and his third touchdown of the night, matching Alge Crumpler as the only Falcons tight end with three scores in a game. While the occasional lapse in concentration and/or bad drop is probably never going to disappear entirely, Pitts’ reliability as a pass catcher has improved considerably this year, and his size, speed, and after-the-catch ability mean he can dominate for stretches when the team feeds him. It’ll be interesting to see what team and player want to do next, as he’s set to hit free agency after the 2025 season; either way, he made history with an astonishing effort on Sunday night.
- Bijan Robinson won’t be the headliner from Thursday night, given what Cousins and Pitts did, but he had an absurd game regardless. A total of 175 yards—93 rushing, 82 receiving—and a touchdown on 27 touches is just plain great, and Bijan earned it by making defenders slip, blowing by defenders a step slow to see where he was going, and jump cutting his way past guys who were in the right position before he altered time and space around him. The fumble was the only blemish in four quarters of work.
- David Sills put together easily his best overall game of the season. While he made a couple of solid grabs early, his night seemed destined to be defined by that costly drop. He earned some redemption for it later by reeling in a couple of tough, really critical grabs, including a gotta-have-it catch on 4th and 14. Sills needs to be lower on the depth chart if he returns next year simply because the Falcons need more consistency and dynamic play from their WR2/3 (depending on injuries) but he finally looks like a player who can handle a larger volume of work even if it’s an uneven effort, and that will likely pay off for him and Kirk Cousins down the stretch.
- I still don’t know how the Falcons recovered their two fumbles. Give Ryan Neuzil all the credit in the world for diving into a pile of Buccaneers on Darnell Mooney’s toss into traffic and somehow coming up with it, a game-saving play that was all awareness and effort, and for wrestling with the Buccaneers when Cousins was strip sacked to get a tie that went to the offense. The Falcons were extremely lucky to win this game, but you can also manufacture your own luck by never giving up on a play, something they managed twice.
- Pressure works on Baker Mayfield, and James Pearce Jr. knows a thing or two about pressure. He had two sacks in this one, running his franchise-best streak to six games and setting the rookie franchise record for sacks, adding in a swatted pass that fell incomplete and terrorizing Mayfield throughout much of the evening. Had it not been for a handful of missed holds and penalties erasing his fine work, Pearce would have gotten even more attention for his excellence; as it was, he looks like he’s going to be the best Falcons pass rusher in a long, long time.
- Brandon Dorlus was a terror too. Give credit to David Onyemata and LaCale London, who each also had a sack, but Dorlus could have had three if he hadn’t just let Mayfield escape his grasp more than once. He still had one sack, contributed on one of Pearce’s takedowns, and wreaked havoc throughout the evening. Dorlus has rounded into the draft steal we all thought he’d be.
- Dee Alford had his struggles in coverage—not compared to A.J. Terrell’s penalty party and Cobee Bryant’s rookie adventures, but still—but he came up with a huge play in the fourth quarter. Playing zone, Alford read where Mayfield was going with the ball, showed patience to wait for it, and then leapt up and made the interception to give Atlanta the ball back. Considering any Buccaneers score likely would’ve been a dagger at that point with the Falcons down eight points, it was a phenomenal play that saved the game. Alford has had a real bounceback year despite not entering the season as a starter, and I’ll continue to pound the table for bringing him back in 2026.
- Zane Gonzalez may have caused a few heart murmurs on Thursday night, but he continues to be the most reliable kicker Atlanta’s had in 2025, even if I’d prefer he stopped botching kickoffs. On a night where the Falcons needed every point, he hit both extra points and both field goal tries (one came back because of a penalty on Tampa Bay, blessedly), including the game winner in a pressure cooker as time expired. The Falcons are likely to at least have a competition for kicker next year, but in the here and now, it’s been very nice not to fear for my life every time someone lines up for a field goal try.
- There’s plenty of behind-the-scenes wondering to do given Ray-Ray McCloud’s complains, the KhaDarel Hodge benching, the Ike Hilliard firing, and the organization and Raheem Morris being as combative as they often are. But I have found the idea that the Falcons have quit on the season to be absurd, if for no other reason than that these are professionals with contracts to earn and keep and pride built up over a lifetime of playing football. It’s just that resilience and effort haven’t translated to a whole lot this year, so it was nice to see the furious comeback and lack of quit rewarded this time.
- A better day for the coordinators overall. Aside from Gonzalez, there were no massive special teams lapses; the defense largely failed on the back of player errors, injuries, and penalties, and the offense overcame some infuriating third down nonsense in large part because Zac Robinson cooked up a game plan that worked and players executed it very well. This shouldn’t change anyone’s fortunes, of course, but it was good to see.
- Atlanta has to be sick of being called the sloppiest, worst-coached team in the division and watching the Bucs win it; putting a dagger in them in primetime and having the Buccaneers arguably out-slop them despite Tampa Bay having a fraction as many penalties must have felt even better for them than it did for us.
The Ugly
- The offensive line has been good for one or two backbreaking penalties every single week. A false start on Elijah Wilkinson helped kill Atlanta’s first drive, and a hold on Jake Matthews on the second drive was similarly devastating for a team that had just gotten a 26 yard Kyle Pitts reception to get moving; Chris Lindstrom got his own false start a little later. Later, Matthews would pick up another hold and a false start, marking one of his worst weeks of the year. The Falcons are bad enough offensively most of the time without penalties further hurting them; they’re fortunate it wasn’t a killer in this one.
- That David Sills drop was heartbreaking. Sills has had a couple of big moments in recent weeks but remains a guy who would be best suited as, say, WR4/5 for a team with a better corps, and he showed why when his defender slipped, he streaked down the sideline, and Kirk Cousins hit him in the hands before he simply dropped a potential touchdown. I’m glad he rallied after that, but those lapses have cropped up for him.
- Speaking of lapses, Darnell Mooney continues to fill his season with them. He and Cousins were absurdly fortunate to have their fumbles recovered by their own teammates (big kudos to Ryan Neuzil there); had either one been lost, the game likely would have been lost with it. Given that Mooney is something of an afterthought in this passing game by now, fumbling away the ball on his best catch of the day could shrink his role further.
- The Falcons put together some great stuff late to make the number look better, thankfully, but third down conversions continue to be a massive trouble spot for Zac Robinson and the offense. Without fixing that on a more consistent basis, this offense has a hard cap, one they won’t be able to push past every week.
- A.J. Terrell had a rough day last Sunday against the Seahawks, and that continued for reasons that were far from entirely his fault in this one. Somehow, Terrell got three flags in the first two quarters, and each one of them seemed borderline at best; one of them looked like an absolute phantom call. I’m sure Terrell will be watching his hands the final three weeks as a result, but I’m not sure he really did anything wrong until his fourth call in the fourth quarter, which was a more obvious interference that gave the Buccaneers first and goal. I have more quibbles with his tackling, which was hit or miss again, but being penalized five times in one game (yes, he picked up another one) a week after your worst game of the year is not impressive stuff.
- Cobee Bryant was pressed into action for Mike Hughes against a team with big, dominant receivers and a gunslinging quarterback, and it went as expected. Bryant had a couple of huge hits and I thought gave a game effort that saw him close in coverage on multiple occasions, but he also made rookie mistakes, slipped, and simply couldn’t make plays working against the likes of Mike Evans and Emeka Egbuka. It was a good trial by fire for a promising player I like a lot, but I can’t tell you with a straight face that it went well; for a while there, the Bucs were exclusively throwing at him.
- The decision to go for two seemed questionable in the moment and predictably backfired. Atlanta was trying to make it a six point game and put additional pressure on Tampa Bay, setting themselves up to potentially win the game outright later on, but missing it would force you to go for two again if you managed to score another touchdown. I recognize that you can make the case for that using analytics and the likelihood you’ll get one of those two tries if you have to take them, but these are the Atlanta Falcons we’re talking about, and risk usually leads to poor outcomes. Atlanta did indeed miss both two point tries, meaning late in the fourth quarter they were down two points with Tampa Bay getting the chance to seal the game. They won regardless and I generally favor aggression, but when you’ve struggled as much as the Falcons have this year, that seemed like an awfully big risk to take.
- This was a deeply embarrassing effort from the Falcons from a discipline standpoint, even if some of the calls were questionable at best. Atlanta had 14 penalties with seven minutes on the clock in the third quarter, set a team record with 19 accepted penalties (the highest single game total since the 2019 Browns, and the highest total in a winning effort since the 2016 Raiders), and were hit over and over again with flags that either backed up the offense or gave the Bucs offense new life. Hell, Zane Gonzalez even missed the landing zone on a fourth quarter kickoff. You simply can’t win like that 99.9% of the time, and it’s on the coaching staff to get this team to play more disciplined football, and on the players to stop putting the entire team in bad spots. Even though the Falcons weren’t among the league leaders in penalties through much of the season, there’s nothing to suggest they’re capable of playing cleaner football, and that will destroy them at some point in the final three weeks if they don’t manage to better it.
- I’ll reserve my final note for the officiating crew. There were so many borderline calls—really on both teams, but primarily on Atlanta given the sheer number called—that it left a sour taste in my mouth. Atlanta committed plenty of clear, obvious penalties, so it was frustrating to see additional ones tacked on, and while I have no doubt the Falcons were sloppy, the balance of penalties was so lopsided that it beggared belief for a crew that seemed to be itching to toss those flags.
The Wrapup
Game MVP
This one should be shared. Kyle Pitts for a career game where he embarrassed Tampa Bay’s secondary, putting together one of the most productive games by a tight end in Falcons history, and Kirk Cousins for once again dominating the Buccaneers and making Pitts’ success possible.
One Takeaway
There’s the kernel of a better team in there somewhere, buried under the layers of bad football, penalties, and dispiriting losses, and it can still come out at times.
Next Week
After a long layoff, the Falcons get the Cardinals next. That’s another winnable game before a primetime tilt with the Rams and a season-ending matchup against the Saints.
Final Word
Enjoyableintheend.
