If I told you the Atlanta Falcons limited the Los Angeles Chargers to 17 points, you would have assumed the Falcons won the game. As shaky as the offense has been recently, the idea that they would fail to score 17 points would have seemed outlandish on Sunday morning.
But they didn’t. They scored 13. A missed Younghoe Koo field goal early on appeared to shake Atlanta’s faith in their kicker, but that was not the primary reason Atlanta lost the game. That would be Kirk Cousins and the Falcons passing game, which squandered a strong day on the ground from Bijan Robinson en route to a couple of tough drops, a lot of off-target Kirk Cousins throws, and a nightmarish four interceptions, including a pick-six that turned out to be the winning score for Los Angeles.
This was a disasterclass from Cousins, who went from looking a bit tepid at times over the course of the season to an active liability over the past few weeks. His accuracy was awful all day, but his decision-making was worse, seeing him throw short of the sticks over and over again, including on a can’t-do-it pick-six that would’ve failed on fourth down even if Cousins had connected. A third down shot to the end zone that fluttered to no one in particular and was picked off, robbing the Falcons at a chance to make it a one point game on a Younghoe Koo field goal, was excruciating. Then a 4th and 12 desperation heave right to a defender that sealed the game followed. Oh, and Cousins also fumbled on a sack to make that drive even harder than it was before, setting up the ultimate failure that was that interception.
It’s fair to say the Falcons can’t win a game where Cousins turns it over four times and tries to do so a fifth time; I think you can fairly argue they can’t win a game where Cousins turns it over twice. That kind of performance overshadows everything else about this game because the veteran quarterback was supposed to be Atlanta’s solution to turnover-prone play at the position, but his recent slide has been been a major factor in the team’s three game losing streak. When you’re investing as much as the Falcons have invested in Cousins over the short term, you want immediate, positive results. When you get a game like this, the scrutiny that follows is extremely justified.
What’s so frustrating about that is nearly everyone else played a decent game, with even Koo hitting two tries after his early miss. Ray-Ray McCloud had a huge play, Drake London made a number of tough catches despite his one drop, Bijan Robinson was terrific, the line blocked pretty well all day, and the defense had their strongest performance in a long time. A couple of seemingly low-effort plays from Kyle Pitts and some Dee Alford miscues in coverage against Ladd McConkey could be singled out, and you can certainly ding the coaching staff (Zac Robinson in particular) for some frustrating choices in play calling. The Falcons still would’ve and should’ve won that game if Cousins had been merely competent; it’s the exceedingly rare loss that I’d pin this extremely heavily on the quarterback.
Atlanta’s now in a tough spot. At 6-6 and with the Buccaneers basically tied if not for the tiebreaker, they need to start winning and keep winning or they’re going to be vying for a wild card spot they’ll be fortunate to grab hold of. Their margin for error has shrunk to a razor thin one, but their errors are piling up, with the team falling apart in one phase or multiple phases for the past three weeks. It’s maddening to know how close the Falcons have been to winning games against the Chiefs, the Saints, and now the Chargers, but their consistent inability to finish those games looks like a feature rather than a bug as those games pile up. Having made some real strides with the defense and knowing you can rely on a rock solid run game, the time is now for the Falcons to either bench Cousins for Michael Penix (they won’t) or fix him, and to get Younghoe Koo back to a level of reliability or move on (and they probably won’t). Barring that, this season threatens to go the same way the past six did: Into a spiral of disappointment with no postseason appearance, and another offseason of finger-pointing, roster upheaval, and questions at quarterback.
On to the full recap.
The Good
- The Falcons got…sacks? Arnold Ebiketie grabbed two in the first half, one that ended a drive and another that prevented Justin Herbert from taking off for a big gain, and Grady Jarrett chipped in a drive killer earlier on. That was three in the half, or over a quarter of their season total against a team with a quality offensive line and tought-to-take-down quarterback. Then Kentavius Street got the fourth sack of the game in the third quarter, taking down Justin Herbert on second down to make the drive unworkable, and Kaden Elliss added another. Five sacks is a huge total for a team that had been generating so few, and the work the team put in during the bye appears to borne some fruit on defense.
- Props for coverage, too. Down Mike Hughes, the Falcons still got the job done for much of the day, with Dee Alford putting forth a gritty effort despite some tough reps against Ladd McConkey, A.J. Terrell and Clark Phillips playing some shutdown ball, and Justin Simmons getting in on the action with some nice plays in coverage. The Chargers have a limited receiving corps, but even given that, the Falcons had to contend with a great quarterback in Justin Herbert and limited the damage down a starter in the secondary. That’s another very good sign for the side of the ball that was a huge liability coming into the bye.
- Hell, the Chargers had just 56 yards on the ground. People told me anxiously all week that Gus Edwards or Kimani Vidal would take over the game, but instead a unit that finally had Troy Andersen back and has been getting a little better up front against the run delivered a shutdown day, allowing 28 yards on two carries and 28 yards on the other 15. Raheem Morris, Jimmy Lake, and several players on this defense came under withering criticism for very good reason before the bye; the fact that they were able to get healthy and identify areas of improvement they actually executed on is one of the few remaining reasons to feel hope for the final five games.
- Bijan Robinson is so tough to deal with, a combination of running behind good blockers, being naturally elusive, and becoming increasingly difficult to tackle. In this one, he was breaking off chunk gains at will, picking up additional yardage after contact and finding the seam over and over. Especially early on when the offense was going to hell, he was the team’s lone bright spot and punched in the only touchdown of the game for Atlanta. Carrying it 26 times for 102 yards and reeling in six grabs for another 33 yards, Robinson was once again the focal point of the offense and a rare bright spot.
- Ray-Ray McCloud made one of the plays of the game in this one, turning a nearly picked off pass into a 60 yard gain by staying on his feet on the sidelines, evading defenders, and taking advantage of a Kyle Pitts shove block.
- A lot of Drake London in this one, and plenty of reminders of how tough he is, even if that crucial third and long play where he had the ball knocked loose in part because he didn’t secure it hurt a lot. Nine receptions for 86 yards makes it clear that he’s the team’s top receiving option, as he should be, even if we’d really like to see more Money in the weeks ahead.
- Teams keep trying fake punts against Atlanta, and the Falcons keep punishing them for it. This time, the Chargers went for it on fourth down and five in the fourth quarter, counting on catching the Falcons off guard, but the pass went three yards when the Chargers needed five thanks to an excellent tackle by Kevin King. It’s a credit to these guys and special teams coordinator Marquice Williams that the team never seems to be caught flat-footed by these attempts.
- The team vowed to work on the drive-killing penalties and discipline more generally, and they wound up committing just two penalties for ten yards on the day. That’s a marked improvement that hopefully can be chalked up to a renewed focus on avoiding mistakes that happened over the bye week; if it’s a one week blip I’ll be pretty bummed out.
The Ugly
- To be clear-eyed about it, Kirk Cousins is not getting the job done, and it’s well beyond a few errant throws or tentative decision-making now and into just awful tosses and brutal choices. The Falcons signed him hoping the veteran could recover from his injury and deliver the kind of high-level play they have lacked at quarterback post-Matt Ryan, and they’ve gotten stretches of that play, but not recently. On balance, Cousins has been merely decent throughout much of the year and prone to ugly turnovers, and he threw both a backbreaking pick early in this one that led to points and then a completely indefensible short-armed ball on fourth down that was easily intercepted and returned for a touchdown. On the subsequent drive, he was fortunate a pass to Ray-Ray McCloud wasn’t picked and McCloud was able to make a huge play, but he arguably missed on every single throw on the drive. Then with a short field, Cousins for some reason escaped pressure on third down and just lofted it into the end zone in the general direction of Darnell Mooney and it was picked.
The Falcons are paying a lot of money for above average quarterback play; instead, they’re getting a less mobile repeat of Desmond Ridder’s fumble-and-interception happy 2023 in recent weeks. They can’t win like that, and if the season starts to slip away, the calls for Michael Penix are justifiably going to intensify, given that a version of Cousins that can’t deliver accurate balls and continually turns it over is a huge negative for Atlanta. I can’t imagine the Falcons actually going to Penix soon—Raheem Morris all but waved that way in his post-game press conference—but I doubt the Falcons will put up with another performance of this kind with the season potentially at stake. We’ve been waiting for Cousins to semi-permanently turn the corner—you expect bad games for any quarterback—but right now the risk the Falcons took bringing him in hasn’t come close to paying off the way the team hoped.
- I don’t think the play calling was exactly brilliant against Los Angeles, to shade in the criticism of Cousins and perhaps offer a defense. The Falcons had too many plays without a compelling quick option or that appeared unfit for the situation the team found themselves in, the least defensible of which was a jet sweep to McCloud on third and 1 in the fourth quarter on Atlanta’s final drive of the game, after a jet sweep had already failed earlier and the Chargers had been very strong in short yardage situations. For a quarterback scuffling as badly as Cousins is, the fact that Atlanta were working with plays that didn’t give him quick reads or the right read past the marker—here I am looking at the fourth down throw that went for a pick six, where Cousins never should’ve thrown the ball but he also never should’ve had an option short of the sticks, given his history—just compounded the misery. The Falcons may not be able to easy button their way out of whatever funk Cousins is mired in, given that he was missing open guys on Sunday, but they need to find something workable while getting it done in short yardage. That falls on offensive coordinator Zac Robinson, ultimately.
- Do the Falcons feel like they can’t consistently win on, say, 3rd and 1 or 3rd and 2 situations by running Tyler Allgeier or Bijan Robinson up the gut? Disconcertingly, that appears to be the case, and the track record this year suggests the push hasn’t consistently been there.
- The knocks on Kyle Pitts won’t be quieted by this one. The broadcast noted that he seemed to slow on his end zone route where Cousins sailed a ball to him; I’m not sure it would have been on target at full speed, but Pitts of all people can’t be raising questions about effort with those questions buzzing around him non-stop over the past three seasons. A half-hearted (but somewhat effective!) block on McCloud’s big play and another shaky route through a defender late conspired to give Pitts a goose egg on the day, and he’s gone back to being a ghost in this offense. I don’t know that he’ll be long for Atlanta if this keeps up; the talent is there but Pitts isn’t consistent and his role isn’t either.
- The one defensive frustration? The fact that Ladd McConkey was obviously far and away the best Chargers receiving option and the Falcons basically allowed him to work them over while he was in there and healthy in the early going. You can pin a lot of that on Alford and you can excuse some of it given how good McConkey is, but it was still frustrating to watch.
- Younghoe Koo did hit two field goals, rallying from his early miss, and he was dealing with an injury coming into this that likely hampered him. I do feel like saying earlier this year that he had proven himself to be beyond criticism was, unfortunately a curse. That miss was an ugly one that had ramifications later in the game for Atlanta, which otherwise might have found themselves within a point and able to win on a field goal late, and the team appeared to avoid a long field goal try at least once because they didn’t feel totally confident in Koo. If that’s the case, and it’s not purely health-related, it’s not a great sign for Koo’s future in Atlanta. Teams can only ride with inconsistent quarterbacks and kickers for so long.
- While the defense finally came through, the story of this season thus far is that very little has worked the way it is supposed to for very long. A new coaching staff and fresh additions was supposed to create an explosive, hard-to-contain offense, but this team has been anything but throughout much of the year. The defense was supposed to be able to limit explosive plays and hold offenses in check; until Sunday they hadn’t really done so for an entire game outside of maybe the Chiefs. And special teams was supposed to tie it all together with hyper-reliable specialists to win close games, but Koo has been falling apart and contributing to the malaise. It’s a top-down failure, from a front office that has missed on trades and draft picks to a coaching staff struggling in one way or another to come up with answers to players who aren’t executing the way they should. A 6-6 season shouldn’t feel like it’s in danger of slipping away, but that’s very much where we are after three straight losses.
The Wrapup
Game MVP
The pass rush, the larger defense, Jimmy Lake, give it to who you want out of that group. Limiting the Chargers to nothing but field goals on offense and holding them on check despite the presence of Justin Herbert is a legitimate achievement, one that we’d be applauding loudly had this team only won the game.
One Takeaway
The Falcons just can’t put a full, quality game together, and Kirk Cousins’ recent slide is imperiling the season.
Next Week
The Minnesota Vikings on the road, with Cousins facing his former team and all sorts of NFC playoff implications (and maybe Atlanta’s divisional lead) very much at stake.
Final Word
Toomanyturnovers.
