After taking their first loss of the 2025 NFL season last Sunday night, the Buffalo Bills are once again playing a game in Prime Time this week. They travel south to face off against the Atlanta Falcons
in what could be a difficult game for both squads. The Bills are one of the league’s best offenses, but they struggled mightily last week against a tough New England Patriots defense. The Falcons, on the other hand, have a great defense and a host of weapons on offense that could give the Bills fits.
Buffalo has struggled against the run this season, and the Falcons are sixth in the league in rushing yardage this season. The Bills have been great against the pass, but they struggled to contain Stefon Diggs last week, allowing the star wideout to burn them for 10 catches and nearly 150 yards. The Falcons have multiple players who present matchup issues for a Buffalo defense that wants badly to prove that its early-season struggles are just a blip, not a year-long trend.
The Falcons have plenty of talent, so narrowing this list down to five players to watch this week was difficult. Feel free to add yours below in the comments, but here are our five Falcons to watch this week.
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QB Michael Penix
The second-year man has enough arm talent, and he certainly has enough weapons around him, to make teams pay if they don’t impact him with a strong pass rush. Penix has been a somewhat frustrating watch early in his career, as there are moments where you see what I described above, but also moments of maddening inconsistency. Such is life with a young quarterback, and as Penix prepares to make his eighth career start, the Bills will want to confuse him before the snap with simulated pressure and looks. If they can force Penix to hesitate, they can impact him just enough to make the game a bit more one-dimensional for the Atlanta offense. I’m not sure that the Bills want to ask the next man on our list to beat them, but they need to find ways to keep Penix from beating them on the perimeter. That means they’ll need a much better outing from their cornerbacks this week.
RB Bijan Robinson
Of all the fantastic offensive players Atlanta has, this is the one that should give the Bills the most heartburn this week. Robinson is a dual-threat out of the backfield, as he can run (314 yards, 4.9 yards per carry) and catch (18 receptions on 23 targets for 270 yards). Buffalo was good against the run last week, allowing under 100 rushing yards for the first time this season, but the Patriots don’t run it as well as the Falcons do, and the Patriots’ running backs aren’t nearly as good as Robinson is. The Bills will need to stop the run, or at least limit it, so that the Falcons find plenty of third-and-long situations. If they can keep Atlanta behind the chains, so to speak, then they can at least limit Robinson’s ability to control the football game. Buffalo will need to be sound in their run fits, and they’ll need a big effort from their defensive linemen so that their linebackers can have clear shots at a supremely talented runner.
WR Drake London
After watching Stefon Diggs shred their secondary last week, the last thing Buffalo wants to see is a team with a 6’4” wideout who can run lined up across from them, but that’s what they’ll see on Monday night. If London is matched up with Tre’Davious White, well, after how last week went for White, I assume the Falcons will look to exploit that matchup. White, for his part, has done well to hang with bigger-bodied wideouts even after his various injuries sapped his athleticism, and London is not the same kind of quick accelerator that Diggs is. Perhaps there is room for optimism if the Bills choose to play man at a higher-than-usual rate as they have for much of the season. Trying to make sure that Christian Benford, who has struggled himself this season, is matched up on London might be the safer bet, though. The Bills don’t usually have their corners travel with particular receivers, so they’ll have to be aware of London’s whereabouts throughout the game, but especially on third downs.
TE Kyle Pitts
Pitts is a tremendous athlete, and while he has also been a tremendous disappointment to this point in his career given his high draft status, he’s off to a better start this season. He’s on an 85/871/4 pace so far, and while the yardage number wouldn’t be a career-high (he eclipsed the 1,000-yard mark as a rookie), it would be his highest total since his first year in the league. He’s on pace to catch a career-high number of passes by a long shot, and he is on pace to tie his career-high in receiving touchdowns. If Robinson can gain chunks of yardage on the ground, then the play-action game becomes a problem, and that’s where Pitts can do a lot of damage. Last week, when the Bills sat in zone and could not pressure Drake Maye, that’s when he was able to find Hunter Henry on deep passes over the middle. Penix has the arm talent to find holes in the zone, so the Bills will need to play sound defense in tracking Atlanta’s various weapons.
S Xavier Watts
Atlanta’s defense is a good one. They have ten sacks in four games. They’ve allowed fewer total yards than anyone, and they allow just 4.7 yards per play, good for third in the league. They blitz more than anyone, attacking at a 37.7% clip through the first quarter of the season. Despite that high blitz percentage, though, they only have five total quarterback hurries on the year, producing a hurry on a measly 4% of opposing drop-backs. With that in mind, I’m watching a player in the secondary who would look pretty, pretty great in a Buffalo uniform right now, and that’s the rookie safety from Notre Dame. Watts has two interceptions and 23 tackles so far on the season, and he also has a team-high four pass breakups. While Cole Bishop has begun to show flashes of the ability that the Buffalo coaching staff figured he had, veteran Taylor Rapp has stood out as a weak link in the back end of late. Watts, like Jonas Sanker two weeks ago when Buffalo played the New Orleans Saints, represents a player the Bills could have slotted into their lineup, or at least had waiting in the wings to replace Rapp. Instead, the Bills went with edge rusher Landon Jackson in the third round, and while the rookie finally suited up on game day last week, Watts was selected 24 picks later and has made a significantly greater impact.
