We knew that even a banged-up Ravens team would be a tough out for the surging Falcons, but that Atlanta could increase their chances of a win by playing a clean game that played to their considerable strengths. That’s not what we got.
Instead, the offense looked shaky throughout the first quarter and into the second quarter, with iffy run blocking and Michael Penix Jr. running ice cold. The Falcons defense forced a fumble that Jessie Bates took to the house to give Atlanta the lead, and Penix did
get untracked in the second quarter to lead a productive drive. But the Falcons fought field position issues caused by multiple special teams penalties, struggled to consistently pick up yardage on the ground, had notable miscues in run defense, and tried to get a little too cute on key fourth down and red zone plays in ways that ended up harming the effort. The Ravens, who kept settling for field goals and sticking with what they knew they could do with Tyler Huntley under center and talented backs to bring to bear, made this a tense game as a result even as Jeff Ulbrich kept them at bay and held to 15 points through three quarters. It seemed like the Falcons would still cruise to a win when they went up eight points with not much time left in the fourth quarter, but instead Huntley found endless success on passes over the middle against a gassed defense, including a touchdown, and then Derrick Henry converted the two point try to tie things up. The Falcons, with 40 seconds left, couldn’t get close enough for a field goal try in regulation.
That left overtime, and a gassed defense down CJ Henderson kept showing cracks as Huntley and Henry marched down the field. Jeff Ulbrich has had answers for just about everything this year, but as the game wore on, unproductive blitzes and iffy run defense came to doom Atlanta. That left Tua Tagovailoa, in for an injured Penix, to try to lead a heroic drive down the field to tie things up or win outright down 30-23. He connected on a nice ball over the middle to Drake London and then immediately threw an interception to end things. It felt like a game the Falcons would lose as soon as the Ravens got deep into Atlanta territory late in the fourth quarter, and one of the nastiest things I can say about this game is that it felt extremely familiar.
Ghosts converged on this team from every angle. The shoddy run defense that cost them repeatedly in 2025 was especially costly against a Baltimore team that knows how to run the ball. Penix’s familiar problems with pressure and accuracy, which were largely absent the past two weeks, cost the team opportunities in a way that also proved costly. Mike Hughes’ coverage struggles and the team’s depth woes at cornerback, the former which has been consistent and the latter which we hoped was a thing of the past, hit hard, though in fairness this defense was never going to be in great shape down both A.J. Terrell and CJ Henderson. Coordinators trying things that either outright don’t work or offer quickly diminishing returns played a role in this loss, too, and you can see apparitions of Zac Robinson, Jimmy Lake, Dean Pees, Dirk Koetter, and so forth floating in the air as I type that. This team lost in large part because they were spiritually if not exactly like the Falcons team that have struggled so much in the recent past.
What you make of this loss likely depends on what you made of the Falcons coming into this game, and what you thought Baltimore was capable of with Huntley at quarterback. If you thought Atlanta was showing signs of being a playoff-caliber team after their two beatdowns of Green Bay and New Orleans, this will be a bitter effort to reckon with, especially if you believed the Ravens were not going to be up to snuff with so many backups in. If you thought the Falcons hadn’t faced a true test yet and the Ravens were still one of the league’s better teams even with a backup quarterback and fourth-string center in, this one will sting, but likely only a little.
Either way, the Falcons have fallen back under .500, Penix is hurt (though we don’t know how badly yet), there are fresh questions and familiar questions about everything from the run defense to Jake Matthews to the secondary, and this team is back on the roller coaster we fervently hoped they had hopped off after the past two weeks. They’re neither as bad as they looked the first two weeks nor as good as they looked the last two, but if this ends up representing what this team looks like in the middle of those two poles, it’s going to be another bumpy sort of season.
On to the full recap.
The Good
- Michael Penix Jr. is streaky. He started this game ice cold, not just missing passes but missing them badly, and the offense suffered as a result. He followed that up with a second quarter drive where he caught fire, heaving bombs to Drake London and Jahan Dotson and zipping a pass by two Ravens for a Kyle Pitts touchdown. When he’s on, he can make heroic throws downfield at a rate not many quarterbacks in this league can match, and he was on enough to give this team a fighting chance until quite late.
- Bijan Robinson had a run in the first quarter that left me speechless, where he seemed dead in the backfield and turned around and ripped off a 15 yard run thanks to agility, toughness, and good old-fashioned magic. On a day where Brian Robinson Jr. couldn’t get any breathing room, Bijan put up a tidy five-plus yards per carry and got 86 yards on 17 carries. He probably should have had more touches, honestly, even though there were plenty of unproductive runs along the way. I give him an enormous amount of credit for the sheer effort on a bad Penix throw on the final Falcons drive of regulation, too, even though he couldn’t quite get it.
- I think Penix would throw the ball to Drake London if he was deep in the Pacific Ocean and Penix was on the 35 yard line in Mercedes-Benz Stadium. The level of trust between those two is unreal, and London made huge third down grabs for first downs over and over again in this one, seemingly willing himself open just enough for Penix to laser passes in there to him. London is a great receiver who just needs competent quarterback play to produce like one, and with Penix he has a quarterback who is never going to be afraid to target him.
- Jahan Dotson can fly, and Michael Penix Jr. loves slinging that ball downfield. That’s looking like it’ll be a fruitful combination this year, as Penix hit him for a beautiful deep touchdown in Week 4 and got him on a 36 yard bomb that set up a Falcons score in the second quarter.
- Kyle Pitts was going to get involved, and after he lumbered to life a bit in Week 4, he arrived in Week 5. A nice grab and run in the second quarter was a prelude to a touchdown grab to finish off that drive.
- Samson Ebukam has been a really good signing, and he flashed again in this one. His play of the game was the big third down, third quarter sack of Tyler Huntley, putting a swift end to a Baltimore drive when they were down just two points.
- Ditto Jared Ivey, who has been in and out of the rotation at outside linebacker but had an early sack in this one where he fought through a defender around his .
- Cameron Thomas got a half sack and Gervon Dexter got none, but they were the team’s two most consistently impactful defenders up front from my point of view. Dexter was relentless in pursuit and caught a couple of run plays from behind, while Thomas was one of the few Falcons who consistently made Huntley uncomfortable on Sunday night.
- Kendal Daniels was not always stellar against the run—I saw a couple of iffy angles—but his tackling was mostly incredibly sound, he was getting his hand up constantly and managed to tip a pass, and he looked confident and rangy out there against Baltimore. When teams want to run the ball more, Daniels is the go-to guy next to Divine Deablo, and there’s a good reason for that.
- Sydney Brown delivered a good hit to jar the ball loose from Mark Andrews, which gave Atlanta’s defense a chance to make a big play. Jessie Bates took advantage and authored his latest in a long line of big plays, scooping up the fumble and taking it to the house to open up the scoring for Atlanta.
- Nick Folk started off the season in rough fashion, and I still don’t know the exact range at which the Falcons stop trusting his leg. But in this one, they gave him short tries and a 48 yarder and he banged them home comfortably each time. If the game had come down to his leg in the end, I think the Falcons would’ve gladly given him the shot, but they couldn’t get close enough for him to work.
The Ugly
- Penix is streaky. He started this one missing layups, is now an abysmal 1-0f-16 passing when pressured, and is not a credible threat to scramble for more than a handful of yards. At his worst in this one, he was inaccurate and hesitant, and then he took a big hit near the end of regulation that ultimately knocked him out for overtime. The familiar pressure struggles, accuracy woes on gimme throws, and injury concerns are all there even if Penix (hopefully) does not miss time next week, and while Chicago’s anemic defense gives him a chance for a get-right game, it’s really important for Penix and this offense to find easy buttons against pressure and achieve more consistency so brilliant stretches and games aren’t followed up by costly moments and lackluster efforts. Inconsistency is, at least at the moment, a defining feature for both quarterback and team.
- Tua Tagovailoa finally got into a game when Penix got hurt and completed two of three passes, getting rid of the ball quickly and decisively. Twice that worked out well, as he completed a pair of passes for 34 yards, including a zippy ball downfield to Drake London to kick off Atlanta’s overtime drive. The problem was that he very confidently and quickly threw a gimme interception on that third pass that ended Atlanta’s faint gleam of hope in overtime. If Tua has to start, he can’t be throwing those.
- The offensive line didn’t do a great job. Atlanta barely cleared 100 yards rushing and most of that was due to herculean efforts by Bijan, as he and Brian Robinson Jr. were repeatedly hit shortly after getting the handoff and well before the line of scrimmage. In addition, Penix ate three sacks—some of them owing to his own delay, to be fair—and saw a lot more pressure tonight as Atlanta’s chips failed frequently and Jake Matthews in particular just kept getting smoked. Matthews, you’ll note, has $20 million in dead money next year after the Falcons have continually tacked on extra years to his deal to free up space elsewhere, but he’s going to have to find his footing (and potentially better health, given that he was playing after getting hurt last week) quickly to avoid becoming a real anchor on this offense. That’s not to excuse the overall effort from this line, which was lackluster against a fearsome Ravens front.
- The Falcons brought plenty of pressure but just couldn’t convert it to many sacks, a credit to how quick Tyler Huntley is to get away from pressure and get rid of the ball. That has been somewhat of a theme early on this year, where this pass rush is impacting the game but not consistently closing those plays out. That should come with time, but it gave the Ravens a fighting chance at keeping drives going that they unfortunately capitalized on, with Huntley making a couple of back-breaking throws after evading multiple defenders. He’s an underrated backup, but the Falcons made better quarterbacks in Jordan Love and Tyler Shough very uncomfortable, and the fact that they let Huntley go for a tidy 201 yards and two touchdowns while going 21/32 is bad. There’s no putting a coating of sugar on that one.
- This Falcons run defense had been very good thus far, but they did have a couple of cupcake matchups on the schedule along the way. The Ravens figured to be their toughest challenge and were right out of the gate, with Derrick Henry, Justice Hill, and even Zay Flowers gashing them for major gains on the opening drive. The Falcons did start to settle in, but Henry is a tough matchup and he looked like it throughout the first half. Things felt apart spectacularly on the Ravens’ opening drive of the third quarter, with Justice Hill breaking loose for over 50 yards to set up a score and Henry running wild in the second half against an increasingly gassed defense. We knew the Falcons probably were not the best run defense in the league, but they looked awful on balance Sunday night, allowing over 200 yards to the Ravens and wilting especially badly late. Chicago has to be licking their chops next week with their talented set of backs.
- Special teams has yet to fully gel as a strength, to put it mildly. In this one, the Falcons committed three separate costly penalties—two holds and an unnecessary roughness—that left them with dismal field position to start their drives. Given the margin in this one, the extra yards Atlanta had to travel were certainly a factor in the outcome.
- I didn’t think this coaching staff did a stellar job in this game, something I think they’d echo. Kevin Stefanski’s job is to get this team ready and they looked sluggish and off-balance far too often yesterday evening. Tommy Rees’ job is to make life as easy as possible for this offense and I think he fell short of that with the deletion of the run game inside the red zone, plays like the Jake Matthews touchdown attempt (a fun surprise but not the guy you want to entrust with having to catch the ball in the end zone), and a lack of quick looks for Penix. I definitely thought Jeff Ulbrich, who was working with real limitations after CJ Henderson exited the game, could not come up with answers against the run and resorted to blitzing late when it simply wasn’t working against Huntley, who simply and quickly found the man left open over and over again. With penalties and errors of execution certainly playing a major role, I’m not going to kill the staff for this one, but I think it’s fair to argue they were part of the problem.
- I’ll single out that Matthews touchdown attempt as a defining play for this game, in fact. Matthews was not a sure thing to play in this game and is notably not a receiver in any capacity, with zero career receptions on a single target coming into tonight. The Falcons got the look they wanted as Matthews got open, which is a credit to Rees for drawing it up, but you have to peel back one additional layer and ask whether against a team like the Ravens you really want Matthews having to make a grab to be your scoring play. Penix put the ball a tick too high but was going over a defender there, which meant it was all on Matthews being able to go up and reel that in rather than the Falcons simply trying to go to London or, I dunno, one of their collection of several tight ends who do have experience catching the ball. That’s a play that’s fun to try out against a lesser squad but has too many possible failure points to be a red zone look against Baltimore.
- One of the most important things—perhaps the most important thing—besides wins and losses this year is whether the Falcons can show us they are a different football team than the mediocre, collapse-prone squad that muddled through a series of 7-10 and 8-9 seasons in recent years. The Carolina blowout can be waved away a little if you’re so inclined because of just how awful Cooper Rush was in that game, but that effort and last night’s were vintage Falcons games for different reasons. This one saw the Falcons surrender leads, wilt defensively late, and make too many mistakes across the board to earn the win, and I could have and did write that series of statements dozens of times in different permutations over the past eight seasons. When we look back at the end of the 2026 season, if this loss is emblematic of what the Falcons proved to be over 17 games, this regime will have gotten off to a rocky start.
The Wrapup
Game MVP
Drake London, who simply vacuumed up every target sent his way and kept the Falcons alive over and over again. This game would not have been this close if not for his superlative effort, so he earns the honors.
One Takeaway
The Falcons are going to be an up-and-down team this year because they have unpredictability baked into their quarterback position and enough trouble spots (Matthews, Mike Hughes, potentially the run defense, special teams) that it seems as though it will be difficult for them to sustain stellar play. Let’s hope this one ages poorly.
Next Week
For the first time in nearly a month, the Falcons aren’t in primetime. They’ll be up against the Chicago Bears, possibly getting back Caleb Williams after a couple of rough weeks.
Final Word
DisappointingandIstayeduptoolateforit.
