The rain made the field sloppy, the rain made the Falcons sloppy. In the end, they couldn’t beat a completely one-dimensional Buccaneers team on the road that barely even tried to pass the ball and seemed to relish how embarrassing that became as the game wore on. By the time the dust settled, the Bucs became the first team in over 50 years to win without completing a pass, and the Falcons made unfortunate history in multiple ways before it was over.
If you’ve followed me for any length of time, you know
that I believe one game is one game, and it’s best to patiently build the picture of what a team and/or players are over the course of a season. I get caught up in big days and big moments like anybody else and that bleeds into Sunday and even Monday, but then I try to make myself take stock of the bigger picture. I’ll be doing that again this week, but it rarely feels as tough as it does after this one.
Michael Penix Jr. threw four interceptions and legitimately could’ve thrown three more, and he badly missed other passes that might’ve made a difference in this one. The offensive line didn’t do a great job of protecting Penix or opening lanes on a consistent basis. Tommy Rees and company called doomed screens, chose to pass on the rare occasions when the Falcons had short yardage situations and could’ve run, and just generally seemed ill-equipped to put together a working offense in a rainstorm. Jeff Ulbrich’s defense basically had one job—defend the run—and allowed the Bucs to gash them for over 300 yards even so. Nick Folk missed his field goal try and clearly isn’t going to be trusted in adverse conditions or beyond 50 yards the rest of the season, and Atlanta’s return game was once again basically nonexistent as the team struggled with field position. It’s incredibly difficult to find positives because there were so few in a game the Falcons lost 16-0 and barely seemed competitive in.
Again, it’s one game, but the Falcons are now 1-2 against the division and that’s likely to matter down the line. It’s one game, but the Falcons may be asked to play again in the rain or snow or cold, and this will make you wonder if they can handle that. It’s one game, but the Falcons have a tough assignment against the Bengals abroad next week. It’s one game, but it’s at least the third time this year the Falcons have found themselves down early, struggling, and unable to come up with any answers to avoid the game turning into a legitimately blowout. It’s one game, but it’s a game that feels like the absolute worse games of the late Mike Smith era, the mid-to-late Dan Quinn era, the Arthur Smith era, and the Raheem Morris era. It’s one game, but it’s just about as terrible a game as you can imagine the Falcons playing.
The Falcons, of course, can’t linger on it. They won’t be playing in driving rain in Spain a week from now, and may not actually have to deal with wet conditions the rest of the way, and they know that game was the outlier of all outliers in terms of their run defense having to put up with nonstop running and Penix playing about as poorly as he can possibly play. There’s only so much you can take away from a game you may not see again for a decade, in terms of conditions and opponent game plans, and getting stuck trying to fix what ailed them on this specific Sunday is unlikely to be a great use of their time. They have to get ready for a pass-first script from Joe Burrow and the Bengals and the weakest run defense they’ve faced in weeks, which will drastically change how they approach the next game. It pays to have a short memory in the NFL, and the Falcons will under a head coach as even-keeled as Kevin Stefanski.
For those of us in the stadium and at home, though, this will linger and should linger. It’s the latest sizeable dent in the notion that this Falcons team is (or even can be) different than the many hapless ones that preceded it; the Falcons in the past few eras were capable of truly astonishing wins against teams they weren’t expected to contend against but fell to earth in dispiriting ways the following weeks. For these Falcons to truly be different, they have to have something more than a deeply inconsistent team that follows a dominant week or two with horrors that would make Stephen King blush.
If this isn’t rock bottom for the Falcons by a mile, this season is over, no matter how grim the NFC South may be. Whether they continue to “same old Falcons” or find their footing, the Falcons can’t dwell on their ugliest losses this year. Unfortunately, it’s difficult for us not to do so.
On to the full recap.
The Good
- Bijan Robinson’s balance was such an asset on a very wet field. Over and over again, he went into the pile or survived an early onslaught to pick up extra yardage, something that would’ve been impossible for a lesser back with lesser ability. His ugly drop was the only significant stain on a quality (if somewhat quiet by his standards) day, especially because the Buccaneers run defense has long given him fits. If only Bijan had not been mothballed on critical late game short yardage situations, eh?
- Jahan Dotson had the biggest play of the game on offense, underscoring how dangerous he can be. He took a risky Penix pass, went around a defender, and turned on the jets for a 76 yard gain that should have set up Atlanta’s first scoring drive had the team not frittered it away. No other Falcon had more than 10 yards and Dotson had 95 on two receptions; it’s safe to say he bounced back this week even if he’ll always likely be inconsistent from week-to-week.
- Jessie Bates is on fire right now, and he made the play of the game in this one. With Baker Mayfield escaping the pocket after a busted play and flipping it backwards to Bucky Irving, the Bucs running back had a clear lane to the end zone…right up until Bates arrived and chopped hard at the ball. That forced a fumble that landed out of bounds, and per NFL rules, that meant Atlanta got the ball. It was a massive, six point swing when the Falcons would’ve been down 10-0, and exactly the kind of play that makes Bates worth every penny.
- Mike Hughes had a tremendous play on the first drive, with Baker Mayfield’s end zone bomb to Ted Hurst looking caught…until Hughes chopped it out of his hand at the exact right time to prevent a score and force Tampa Bay to settle for three. We’ve been justifiably hard on Hughes this year, but credit where it’s due.
- Maason Smith’s third down stop with the Bucs driving and threatening to move the game from “likely out of reach” to “entirely out of reach” was a huge play. I wished it had mattered more.
- Jake Bailey had a solid day at the office, pinning the Bucs inside their own 20 twice and averaging nearly 50 yards a punt. Paired with stingy work from Falcons special teams—they only allowed two punt returns for a combined eight yards—the punting game did its job.
The Ugly
- Michael Penix Jr. had done a good job of taking care of the football, but he had been fortunate not to throw a couple of picks over the past few weeks that bounced off defender’s hands. That hot streak ended in this one in excruciating fashion, as Penix threw two first quarter interceptions right at Alex Anzalone, who he appeared not to see on both occasions. It was a gruesome performance that got worse, with Penix badly missing a wide open Kyle Pitts after shrugging off a sack attempt and then throwing his third interception on a half-hearted fourth down attempt in the second quarter. He then threw a fourth interception on another ill-advised throw to Charlie Woerner that was picked off by a leaping Zyon McCollum. The Falcons clearly planned to stay balanced despite the wet field conditions, and sticking with that (as well as the run game running into a tough Bucs defense) led to the worst game of Penix’s career thus far. The knock on Penix is that in pressure situations and less than optimal conditions, he turns into a pumpkin, and those criticisms are justifiably going to get much louder after this abysmal effort. He’ll almost assuredly bounce back, but it was worrying just how sloppy Penix’s accuracy, vision, and general play were in this one.
- The line is really struggling against quality run defenses right now, with Tre’Shon Diaz correctly calling out the interior of the offensive line in particular for its struggles. The quality of the opponent is obviously a factor—Tampa Bay has been giving Bijan in particular and this run game more generally fits for a while now—but this group is supposed to enable Atlanta to have a potent ground game. When they have really needed it over the last month, it hasn’t happened, and that’s more about the blocking than it is about the backs.
- The run defense had stretches where it looked quite competent, but given that these Buccaneers were entirely one dimensional, it was upsetting how often they seemed ill-prepared and ill-equipped to stop Tampa Bay on the ground. This was especially evident in the third quarter when Bucky Irving and Kenneth Gainwell slipped through multiple tackle attempts to pick up 46 and 28 yards, respectively, on a pair of carries. By the time Irving pushed his way through contact to score a touchdown and make it 16-0, it felt like all the air had gone out of Jeff Ulbrich’s defense, and they ultimately allowed over 300 yards. Even a solid day against the run might not have been enough based on how the offense played, but the fact that the Bucs found so many good lanes, that there were so many missed tackles, and that the Falcons appeared to still be defending the threat of a pass that never came, it was not a banner day for either this D or Jeff Ulbrich.
- I don’t think Tommy Rees had a good plan Sunday. The focus on the pass when it wasn’t working was a huge drag on this team, and that came to a head in the fourth quarter with the Falcons within striking distance and time getting low when the Falcons had a second down, third down, and fourth down and 2 and elected to throw three straight times. Penix nearly threw an interception on second down and then missed on back-to-back throws on third and fourth down, with the Falcons inexplicably putting Bijan Robinson on ice in three straight situations where having a dynamic running back would seem to beg you to run it. Rees has been on balance solid-to-good, but the dwindling success of the run game, the stubbornness at times with putting the ball in Penix’s hands when it’s not working, and the very spotty success of the screen game has been frustrating for a while now.
- Nick Folk had a tough job to kick a 53 yarder in the rain, and he promptly missed it wide left. The misses, the lack of reliability in adverse conditions, and the fact that they don’t seem particularly eager to let him have long tries adds up to a shaky picture. He’s been doing this so long that Folk can obviously go on a tear and dispel these concerns, but right now I’m not convinced he’ll finish the 2026 season as Atlanta’s kicker.
- The team’s late down conversion percentage is woeful, and it’s a major issue for this team that has flown under the radar the past two weeks because they A) won impressively and B) lost in such a way that the big, dumb plays will overshadow it. But Atlanta’s in the bottom third of the league in third down conversion percentage on the year and are very near the bottom of the entire league in fourth down conversions. Part of that is finding themselves in third and long situations far too often, which goes back to the mixed run game success and some of Penix’s misses, but part of it is just not having the right play or good execution when you have to have it. The Falcons’ 4th down conversion percentage will actually go up after they converted multiple opportunities today, but the misses were awfully grim.
- I did not enjoy seeing the Falcons outmatched by Todd Bowles and Zac Robinson, in particular, but that’s what happened. The Bucs leaned on their strengths to an absurd degree and responded to the weather by running until the Falcons could stop them, which turned out to be never. While the Falcons run game wasn’t great, it was still better than a borderline useless passing attack until very late, and going away from it and not being able or willing to key on the run hurt them tremendously. Sorry, having a hard time with this one.
The Wrapup
Game MVP
Jessie Bates for that touchdown-saving play because it was extremely awesome and prevented this from being even worse than it was, and on a day like today, that’s enough.
One Takeaway
This is yet another Falcons team that seems destined to be defined by their inconsistency, with the highs soaring enough for them to knock off the league’s best teams and the lows bottoming them out to the point that they get shut out by a vulnerable squad that doesn’t even complete a pass. What version will we see next?
Next Week
Hopefully the good one, because the Falcons now have to go up against the Cincinnati Bengals in Spain. Get your coffee ready for a 9:30 a.m. start time.
Final Word
Awful.
