The Falcons are officially on the back foot to start their 2025 campaign. Yet another game against the Bucs went down to the wire yet another time and, unlike the two meetings last season, this one did not go in Atlanta’s favor with Younghoe Koo missing a potential game tying field goal as time expired.
Chalk up the L, and register the 0-1 record. Things don’t get much easier with Week 2 being a road trip to a raucous U.S. Bank Stadium in Minnesota on Sunday Night Football for a date with a Vikings
team which went 14-3 last season.
While we are just one game into the new season, the last thing any team which suffered defeat this past weekend wants is to stack that with another failure. The hole suddenly starts getting dug deeper and deeper, as the Falcons look to get rid of their shovels.
Here is the scenario the Falcons face if they beat the Minnesota Vikings in Week 1, as well as if they lose.
If the Falcons win
It won’t fully remove the bad taste of the Bucs defeat, given that that was a loss against the team they will likely be competing with for division supremacy, but it would get this team back on track with Michael Penix’s first ever road victory as an NFL quarterback.
It would resemble last season a little bit, when Atlanta came out flat to lose a home game out of the gate before winning as road underdogs in prime time in Week 2. That helped spur a run of six wins over the course of eight weeks which really had the team rolling.
Things suddenly would start looking up all of a sudden, with a home game against the Carolina Panthers coming up and a chance to flip the script early on to be sitting at a 2-1 record before an absolute gauntlet ensues in the immediate aftermath.
Atlanta is currently one of three NFC South teams with an 0-1 record to start, with Tampa being the only winner in the division this past weekend. If the Bucs were to also lose to Houston, Atlanta would find themselves back on level footing early on in the south, albeit without the tiebreaker.
If the Falcons lose
Then we will officially be moving into dangerous territory, just given the context and circumstances which surround the early part of the season.
Falling to an 0-2 record would put on all the pressure possible to beat the Panthers in Week 3, as a defeat there would and should ensue full on panic. The three games after that are the Commanders, Bills and 49ers, all games where the Falcons will be heavy underdogs as a potential 1-5 start to the season wouldn’t seem too farfetched. That’s the kind of record which can demoralize a franchise entirely and decimate a season before even the halfway mark.
That’s of course looking ahead over a month in advance. For this coming week, a defeat could see Tampa Bay take a very quick 2.0 game lead in the NFC South with the tiebreaker also in their pocket, and would mean two quick defeats to NFC opponents right out of the gate.
This would also be Minnesota’s seventh victory against Atlanta in the past eight meetings, dating back to 2014. More than a decade of one sided dominance in this matchup.
