The final score is ultimately all that matters, but it's also a blunt tool when it comes to measuring how good an NFL team is in any given game. Now we have countless advanced metrics that give us a more detailed look at what happened on the field - and in this case it's good news for the Atlanta Falcons and their Week 1 performance.
Despite Sunday's loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers looking pretty sobering, if we look at Expected Points Added the picture gets a lot rosier. Marc Raimondi at ESPN says the Falcons' defense had the second-best total EPA in the league this week, while Pittsburgh's defense ranked first.
The #Falcons defense was second in the league Sunday in opponent Total EPA (-22.2). The Steelers defense was first (-23.6).
— Marc Raimondi (@marcraimondi) September 15, 2026
Atlanta's
defense definitely played well under the circumstances. They contained Jaylen Warren and Rico Dowdle on the ground right up until the last two minutes of the game, and pressured and disrupted Aaron Rodgers consistently in the pocket. The coverage on the back end was also pretty solid outside of A.J. Terrell's performance, and they managed to almost completely shut down DK Metcalf. Second-best in the league is a pleasant surprise, though.
On the other side of the ball, it was difficult watching live to gauge just how good Pittsburgh's defense was given how bad Falcons quarterback Cooper Rush performed in his debut, onlu a handful of weeks after joining the team. This number gives Rush a bit more credit for just how hard it was out there.
At the moment it sounds like Rush will be starting again this week, so maybe he'll fare better against a Carolina defense that just gave up nearly 60 points at home.
This article originally appeared on Falcons Wire: Advanced stats say Falcons' opener wasn't as bad as it looked
