The Atlanta Falcons were wary of the interim head coach bounce. They talked about matching energy and knowing what the road environment would be like. They’ve preached the importance of overcoming their mistakes and finding success doing what they do best, and they knew they were facing a New Orleans Saints team that would treat Week 10 like their Super Bowl.

All of that added up to…well, not much. A strong second half from the defense and some legitimate good fortune—Alvin Kamara doesn’t drop a wide open sideline ball all that often, and that would’ve salted the game away—couldn’t get Atlanta the victory. That’s in large part because they scored just 17 points on the day, with a masterful game from Bijan Robinson and some very game efforts from Atlanta’s pass catchers mattering little because Kirk Cousins got hit and looked tentative. That didn’t add up to much because while they got in range multiple times despite their struggles, Younghoe Koo missed not one, not two, but three field goal tries, with one of those tipped.

It was a game the Saints repeatedly tried and failed to lose, because the Falcons couldn’t and wouldn’t oblige them. The fact that it was only a three point loss is incredible, given that the Falcons had the opportunity to win by a lot and instead squandered countless opportunities against a Saints team that had lost seven in a row. This is why I always say divisional games sow chaos, because the worst team in the division can and will give you hell on their best day, especially on a second meeting.

This was a loss that combined all the worst features of Falcons teams of yesteryear and the glaring weaknesses of 2024. The Falcons pass rush was actually impactful for stretches, but disappeared at all the wrong moments and came away with zero sacks. The defense surrendered big plays that used to doom them but hadn’t this year. The missed field goals were a new problem, but a Falcons quarterback turning the ball over late and making the wrong decision in big moments is straight out of 2022 and 2023. Even acknowledging how shaky New Orleans is, it’s a miracle the Falcons only lost by three points on a day where nearly everything went wrong for long stretches.

Coming out of this one, the Falcons have soul searching to do about the way their mistakes tend to compound, and the way it costs them severely against teams they should be able to beat. Their two NFC losses have now come against a pair of teams struggling badly coming into their matchups with Atlanta, and both of them won after Cousins faded and the Falcons made a raft of preventable mistakes. The confidence that they’ll win the division is still very much there, given the talent on hand and the results they’ve put together to this point in the season, but the disquieting fact that the Falcons are capable of falling apart to this degree will mean our optimism is laced with dread until they kick some of these awful habits.

Also, losing to the Saints just sucks. It always, always sucks.

Big picture, it’s a loss that stings but isn’t fatal, given that the Buccaneers dropped one to the Chiefs to move to 4-6. But it tightens the margins on the NFC South and the larger NFC with the Saints not totally dead yet, and it puts additional pressure on the Falcons to be sharp in the coming weeks with the surging Broncos, solid Vikings, and very good Commanders on the way in the near future. We’re not going to readily forgive or forget this loss—playing like that against the Saints is rage-inducing—but Atlanta just needs to pull it together to stay ahead in the division and stay in favorable position for a playoff run. If they play like they did Sunday, well, there won’t be a lot of happy Falcons fans once again.

On to the full recap.

The Good

Bijan Robinson is so special. Once again, he turned consistently negative plays where he was hit in the backfield or shortly after the line of scrimmage into big gains, the best example being the 37 yard touchdown scamper in the third quarter where he shrugged off a hit, stumbled, and had a defender hanging off of him five yards before the end zone that he also shrugged off. We saw flashes of his potential in year one, but Bijan has been showcasing just how good he is throughout 2024. He finished the day with 116 yards on the ground on just 20 carries, including a pair of scores, and another 28 yards on three receptions. He was Atlanta’s best player by a country mile Sunday.
It was another good day for Atlanta’s top receivers. Drake London put up 97 yards on eight catches despite coming off an injury, showcasing the body control and physicality the Falcons rely on. Darnell Mooney drew a couple of big pass interference calls and put up 96 yards on five receptions of his own, showing a rapport with Cousins that has enabled so much good this year. And McCloud missed one leaping grab over the middle, but had a couple of big catches over the middle too, as he is wont to do. This receiving corps wasn’t perfect and perhaps could’ve gotten open a tick quicker at times to help Cousins out, but I would say they were largely let down by quarterbacking today.
Kyle Pitts also had some key grabs, including two of the final catches of the game to give Atlanta an outside shot at getting into field goal range. A day like today would’ve looked like a miracle output for him two months ago or either of the past two seasons; now it’s a day at the office.
The blocking was often pretty on the ground, even if Cousins took a big hits that were certainlynattributable to the line’s struggles in pass protection. Charlie Woerner continues to be one of the best blocking tight ends in the league, and the number of holes the Falcons opened up for Robinson and Tyler Allgeier was a large number.
Nate Landman’s fourth down stop was one of the biggest plays of the game. With the Saints knocking on the door and going for in on 4th and 2, he spun out of a block and hit Taysom Hill hard enough to slow him down for the rest of the team to show up and drive him back short of the first down. Atlanta’s offense didn’t take advantage, but the stop was crucial.
Clark Phillips had a couple of misadventures in coverage, the most frustrating being one against Marquez Valdes-Scantling (where he might have expected safety help he did not get) that was down the sideline for a huge gain, but I liked what I saw from him with Mike Hughes out. He flew to the ball all day, delivered some big tackles and stops, and had a couple of sticky third down coverage moments to get the Falcons defense off the field. One of my favorite young players on the defense, Phillips is ticketed for a starting role at some point, even if it’s not in 2024.
A.J. Terrell was on MVS for the rest of the game in the second half, and he smothered him. If you need a reminder that Terrell is the team’s top coverage guy, the fact that he silenced a deep threat the team had struggled with in the first half should do it.
It doesn’t show up with sacks, but pressure was an inconsistent but important part of Atlanta’s day. They forced a number of Carr rushed throws and throwaways, including a backbreaking intentional grounding penalty that helped put the Saints wildly off schedule late. There’s at least a little reason for optimism that this group can impact games after the past two weeks.
The second half defensive effort was great, minus one field goal drive and the awful Kaden Elliss coverage on Alvin Kamara late in the fourth quarter on the ball Kamara somehow dropped. Atlanta has to come out better against teams to prevent the team from needing to climb out of big holes, but the way they often clamp down is a testament to coaches and players finding their way. I will say, too, that minus some hiccups the run defense really showed up to play, with several negative-to-no-gain plays blown up by the likes of David Onyemata and Eddie Goldman.
Once again, the Falcons went for it on fourth down and scored. After three Tyler Allgeier carries up the middle gained a total of one yard, Zac Robinson went to the Bijan well against a big body Saints front and he was able to flip in for the score. I continue to love the aggression.
The bright note, really, is that while this might have conference implications, it did not have major divisional implications unless you think the Saints have a late season surge in them. The Buccaneers dropped a close one to the 49ers, meaning they’re 4-6 and effectively 2.5 games back, and the Saints and Panthers are 3-7 and still multiple games behind. Atlanta just can’t let too many more winnable games slide away, especially against the NFC, or there will be costs.

The Ugly

The Falcons defense was doing some customary bending without breaking, but the bending was severe early and turned into breakage. The Falcons allowed Taysom Hill to pick up an 88 yard touchdown that was blessedly called back on a borderline holding call, and then they allowed no-name players to make key catches and struggled with Alvin Kamara and Hill on the ground for much of the first quarter. The lowlight came in the second quarter, when the pass rush couldn’t get home on third down and Marquez Valdes-Scantling outran multiple defenders for a touchdown bomb. Another long play to MVS set up another score, and the Saints never lost the lead. Those early failures are too much when the offense struggles, and while the defense is far from the primary reason the Falcons lost, they have to be able to come out with this kind of effort earlier in games.
Kirk Cousins struggled, bluntly, and that was disappointing after he was absolutely instrumental to the team’s winning ways the past two weeks. For the second time against the Saints and the first time since the Seahawks game, we saw the tentative, hold-on-to-the-ball-too-long version of Cousins that can so frustrate us. In this one, he took sacks he didn’t have to, fumbled twice and was saved (though “saved” on a play where Jake Matthews had to go 18 yards backwards is stretching it) by his teammates, and threw an awful interception late to kill a would-be scoring drive that might’ve won the game or sent Atlanta to overtime. His final numbers are pedestrian instead of truly bad—300 yards on 38 passes, no touchdowns an an interception—but the Falcons badly needed him to be decisive and quick getting rid of the ball throughout the day and Cousins only did so in stretches. There will be far better games ahead for him, just as there have been stellar efforts in the recent past, but you don’t know when you’ll get a shaky Cousins game even if you absolutely do know how costly it will be.
The offensive line had a handful of absolutely nasty pass protection reps that got Cousins hit—giving up a sack to Cam Jordan is beyond the pale—but it’s the penalties that really drive me crazy. Holding calls on Chris Lindstrom and Kaleb McGary and a weird low block call on Lindstrom (he might have tripped, too!) were among the damaging moments, and this team continues to ruin good plays with costly mistakes like that. At some point, they have to stop.
The tackling drove me crazy for long stretches of the game, though the second half was a marked improvement. Had it not been for a penalty, Taysom Hill would have scored an 88 yarder in large part because they missed multiple opportunities to take him down, and they missed chances at everyone from Alvin Kamara to receivers I’ve never heard of early on. It’s not easy to make open field tackles, but not being able to do so consistently is a consistent source of doom.
The concern is settling in for Younghoe Koo, and honestly concern might be underselling it after he missed three field goal tries against the Saints. A 53 yarder than went wide left, a tipped field goal, and a try that doinked off the upright cost the Falcons nine points in a game that was close in the second half, the kind of performance that played a major role in Atlanta losing the game. Koo re-tooled his approach looking for even better results and has in recent weeks had far less. It’s worth noting that Raheem Morris was quick to give him a vote of confidence warranted by the consistency of Koo’s career, but no kicker can endure missing kicks at the clip Koo is managing forever.
That final play of the game was a microcosm of what it looks like when this offense is rushed and feeling too much pressure, as rare as that has been in 2024. A too-short throw to McCloud, who wasn’t able to get to the sidelines and a first down in large part because of that, is an unacceptable result even under duress with the clock ticking. Atlanta never should have been in that situation to begin with, but they were, and that was not fun to watch.
This was one of the only games this year where I felt like the decision-making on tactical stuff was unwise. Raheem Morris had a pair of losing challenges, one on a goal line play where Tyler Allgeier was pretty obviously short and another on a Bijan Robinson catch that looked pretty plainly like it hit the ground. The team also decided to pound the ball up the middle three times with Allgeier despite their cast of playmakers and despite the third time not working; the fact that Bijan scored on the next play does not mean that sequence was wise. On a day where getting the little things right might have make a difference in a close game where so many big things went wrong, it was unfortunate to see those decisions, even if the goal line sequence had only a minor impact.
The sum of all parts here is what gets me. Cousins being mediocre, the line making crucial mistakes at big moments, the defense letting up too many explosives early, and Koo’s misses all blended together and the Falcons still only lost by three points. In a very winnable game, the fact that even just one of those things being slightly different could have won it for Atlanta makes this a beyond aggravating result. A team that prides themselves on finding ways to win finding so many ways to lose doesn’t sit well with me; I bet it’s sitting really poorly with the Falcons themselves.
Small thing, but there are too many rules about awesome catches. Drake London may well have been bobbling it heading out of bounds on the opening drive, but he also made a stupendous effort and grab, and I’m always annoyed when something that great doesn’t count for anything.

The Wrapup
Game MVP

Bijan Robinson, who scored both touchdowns for Atlanta and was so instrumental for keeping their hopes alive throughout the game despite shakiness from so many other areas of the team.

One Takeaway

The Falcons can’t overcome failure in all three phases—no team can—but they have to put work into getting off to faster starts offensively, getting Cousins on track when he’s shaky, and figuring out whatever is going on with Koo to ensure they don’t put up more duds like this one.

Next Week

One more game before the bye, this one against a very tough Broncos defense and capable enough offense. That will be a genuine challenge, and we’ll hope the Falcons can bounce back.

Final Word

Hideous.