The Atlanta Falcons will face the toughest opponent of their entire 2025 season when they host the Buffalo Bills this coming Monday night. Beating the Bills would be huge for the confidence of the young Falcons team and a defining moment of their season.
But to achieve that, they’ll have to do something few have done in recent years: hand the Bills two consecutive losses. Coming off a loss to the New England Patriots, the Bills are usually poised to bounce back. Since 2020, they are 17-5 in games
immediately following a loss. Will the Falcons add a sixth loss to that record?
If they do, it’ll center on the Falcons’ defense stepping up and slowing down the Josh Allen-led Bills offense. Allen emerged from volatile beginnings into one of the NFL’s best passers in 2020 and has since spearheaded the NFL’s most potent scoring offense, as the Bills average a league-leading 29.2 points per game since then.
Man coverage is the usual formula against the Bills, but it’s far from effective
To slow down the offense, the Falcons will likely borrow from the Patriots’ blueprint of playing man coverage. According to PFF, Patriots cornerbacks Christian Gonzalez and Marcus Jones led the league in man coverage snaps. The Patriots’ strategy of dialing up man coverage is not unique to them, as many NFL teams have tried that strategy. The goal of man coverage is to increase the degree of difficulty by forcing Allen to throw into tighter windows while also challenging the Bills’ receivers to try and win more one-on-one matchups.
Falcons defensive coordinator Jeff Ulbrich is no stranger to this strategy, having faced Allen twice a year as the former defensive play-caller of the New York Jets since 2021. Per PFF, the Jets played man coverage on about a third of their defensive snaps in 2024. However, in both games against the Bills, where Ulbrich was serving as interim head coach, that number increased to about half their snaps. Emboldening Ulbrich to deploy a man-heavy defense on Monday night will be the impending healthy return of cornerback A.J. Terrell, who is by far the team’s most effective cover corner.
Falcons must stop both QB and RB to slow down the Bills’ rushing attack
So far this year, according to Sumer Sports, Allen has faced 59 man coverage snaps, the fifth most league-wide. Yet, despite this being a popular gameplan against the Bills, it’s not that effective. Allen leads the NFL in Expected Points Added (EPA) against man coverage, thanks in large part to burning defenses with his running, as he tops the league in EPA on runs against man coverage. If the Falcons are going to avoid being burned by Allen’s legs, they’ll need linebacker Divine Deablo to step up as a spy. Deablo’s coveted blend of size, length, and speed makes him the best equipped defender on the Falcons to slow down the nearly 240-pound Allen if and when he breaks into the open field.
But Allen’s running isn’t the only aspect of the ground game that should concern Ulbrich and Falcons defenders. Bills running back James Cook is off to an impressive start, ranking second in the NFL with 450 rushing yards. Cook was clamped by the Patriots, limited to just 49 rushing yards. This makes it likely the Bills will hope to get him going against a struggling Falcons run defense, which will have to tighten up. Otherwise, Cook’s running will boost Allen and the Bills’ passing attack due to the favorable situations they’ll get from staying ahead of the chains on early-down runs.
Falcons’ pass rush must rebound against one of the NFL’s best O-lines
But even if the Falcons’ run defense does its job and gets the Bills into unfavorable passing situations, pressuring the quarterback will be another huge challenge. After the Falcons’ pass rush got off to a hot start, it has cooled considerably and will also need to step up to disrupt Allen. According to Next Gen Stats, the Falcons pressured opposing quarterbacks on 46 percent of their dropbacks in the first two games of 2025. If they maintained that mark, they’d currently be outpacing the Tampa Bay Buccaneers as the top pass rush in the league. However, the Falcons’ pressure rate has dipped to just 30 percent in their past two games combined, which would rank 26th behind the Baltimore Ravens, instead.
Making it more difficult to reverse that trend this week is the fact that the Falcons are facing the Bills’ offensive line, which is among the NFL’s best. According to Next Gen Stats, Allen has been the least pressured starting quarterback so far in the NFL. If the Falcons are going to buck the trend of man-heavy coverage against the Bills, and opt for more zone, it puts increased pressure on the pass rush to get home with just four.
If Atlanta’s defense can overcome all these challenges, along with the many faced by the team’s offense, they’ll have an excellent opportunity to pull off the upset against Buffalo. It’ll be the signature win that the Falcons need, not only to instill confidence that the team’s defensive overhaul under Ulbrich is paying dividends. The goal is also to instill confidence that the team overall is trending in the right direction under head coach Raheem Morris and quarterback Michael Penix’s leadership.
It will take a complete effort from the entire Falcons team to beat the Bills, arguably the best team in the NFL currently. But if the Falcons can achieve this goal in the national spotlight on Monday Night Football, it could be the defining, signature moment that has been sorely lacking for many years.
