Jacob L. from Ringgold, Georgia

Whelp. Team looked lifeless and unprepared. This has been a recurring issue during the Raheem Morris era, dating back to multiple games in 2024 where our guys haven’t even looked competitive (Seattle, New Orleans, Denver). Are we just losing our focus after a big win?

I understand that we as fans think the Panthers are a joke but it’s the coaching staff’s job to take them seriously. You guys are probably going to have a rough time this week with questions, and we’re all doing your best to be optimistic (it’s only Week 3), but this was about as inexcusable a performance as I can remember. Good NFL teams don’t play like this. Certainly not playoff teams.

There was nothing I saw from practice or pressers that indicated throughout the week that the Falcons were going to come at as flat as they did Sunday. And after going through majority of the conversations from the postgame locker room, the prevailing comment from players was that there was nothing to them that would have foretold what was going to transpire, particularly offensively.

Bijan Robinson: “I was surprised, man. I didn’t want to lose by 30 today. Obviously, nobody did.”

Chris Lindstrom: “We had a great week. We were very sharp. We were on top of our details. Energy was good. Preparation was good. Operations were good. And that’s what sometimes makes these days hard.”

Michael Penix Jr.: “This is not what we wanted. We prepared at a high level to make sure we came out here and got the results that we wanted, but we didn’t. They were a better team today.”

Drake London was straight up asked, “Were you surprised by this performance?”

His response: “Most definitely. Yeah. It just wasn’t good at all. It’s not our standard at all.”

And then, of course, there was Morris who was asked whether or not the team was prepared to play Sunday.

“We were,” Morris said. “I felt like we had two great days of practice. Obviously, the results didn’t show that. You’d have to say no, when you look at the overall aspects of the game. That emotional win we had, you ride that emotional roller coaster. Today, we hit an all-time low. We tried to prepare them as best we could for the environment and it was not good enough.”

I give you all of these quotes because this was arguably the prevailing theme of this Sunday’s locker room conversations. No one could really, truly say why the Falcons came out the way they did; why there was such a sharp decline. Neither players nor coaches. I don’t think it was a matter of losing focus, because I truly didn’t feel any difference in the way the team handled the week from Week 2’s prep to face the Minnesota Vikings on Sunday Night Football to Week 3’s prep to travel to Carolina. And yet, the outcome was vastly different.