The Falcons sit atop the NFC South after completing a season sweep of the Buccaneers with a 31-26 win, led by a stellar performance from Kirk Cousins and the offense. Cousins was efficient and sharp, completing 23 of 29 passes for 276 yards, four touchdowns, and no interceptions. Kyle Pitts found the end zone twice, while Bijan Robinson and Darnell Mooney each added a touchdown, bringing Atlanta fans a level of excitement that’s been missing for years. The offensive unit, orchestrated by Zac Robinson, is finally delivering on the high expectations set by the team’s offseason investments.
Yet, while fans may be dreaming of a playoff run, cracks in the team’s defense are impossible to ignore. Even with the Buccaneers missing their top receivers, Mike Evans and Chris Godwin, Baker Mayfield threw for 330 yards and three touchdowns against the Falcons. Additionally, Tampa Bay’s ground game was surprisingly effective, racking up over 100 yards on just 22 carries. Defensive lapses like these are the kind of issues that could derail Atlanta’s promising season.
The Falcons offensive success, however, hasn’t convinced everyone. ESPN’s Benjamin Solak cautions against reading too much into their high-scoring performances, noting that the Falcons’ three games scoring 30 or more points have come against struggling defenses (the Buccaneers twice and the Panthers). “In those games,” Solak points out, “Kirk Cousins sat in the pocket with a flamethrower, dicing up porous secondaries with anticipation, zip, and accuracy.”
Against tougher opponents with a competent pass rush and solid secondary, Atlanta’s offense has faltered. They’ve scored fewer than 20 points in each of their three losses, and their offense was virtually absent in both their win over the Eagles—until late in the game—and in a low-scoring victory over the Saints, where the defense and special teams had to step up.
Solak attributes some of the inconsistency to predictability in the Falcons’ offensive scheme. For the team to have a true playoff run, they’ll need to break out of this tendency and adjust their approach. As Atlanta moves forward in its 2024 campaign, the offense’s growth and the defense’s stability will be key if the team hopes to hang on to the top spot in the NFC South.
“The issue is the Falcons are just too predictable. If that sounds familiar, it is. We had these complaints about the Falcons’ offense early in the season, when they were only running out of pistol formations and passing out of shotgun. They’ve solved some of the quarterback alignment problems, but that’s not the only thing that can make an offense predictable. Cousins still has one of the lowest rates of play-action in the entire league and still hasn’t intentionally left the pocket all season. In other words, defenses can be confident that when Cousins shows handoff, he’s actually handing it off. And when Cousins drops back, they know he’s going to stay in that pocket. So, the aiming point for the pass rush becomes clear.”
The Steelers and Chiefs also have a couple of the best defenses in the league, and playing them so early in the season doesn’t give an accurate representation of how they’d fare against them later in the season., as Solak alludes.
An argument could also be made that Kirk Cousins, Zac Robinson, and the rest of Atlanta’s offense is just finding its footing. Robinson is a first-time play caller, so improvement is certainly expected. Cousins is coming back from injury and learning a new system with new weapons.
A grace period was expected to be given to this group of pieces that were thrown together in one offseason, and ahead of the halfway point in the season, they look pretty damn good.
Individual snippets can be useful when critiquing, but in the big picture, Cousins has thus far lived up to the expectations of a lot of Falcons fans. He’s playing like a top 10 quarterback.
He ranks 3rd in the league with 2,106 passing yards, 5th in passing touchdowns (14), 9th in completion percentage (68.3%), and 8th in EPA per game. More importantly, the Falcons are first in the division with a 5-3 record.
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Photographer: David J. Griffin/Icon Sportswire
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