The Falcoholic
We assumed we knew this story. There were brilliant moments, stellar individual performances, and stretches where it looked like Atlanta would cruise to an unlikely win. Then it seemed that they were undone by the same errors that have cropped up all season, fresh waves of penalties, and failures by players the Falcons have been forced to count on when the team needed them most.
We won’t write the epitaph for this season, lost as it is, without mention of the Falcons losing repeatedly because of all the shots they fired into their own cleats. For one glorious night, however, all that self-inflicted damage couldn’t kill Atlanta, and a close game that seemed destined to go against them instead ended with Zane Gonzalez’s kick squeaking in through the left upright, propelling the Falcons to a 29-28 victory. It was hard to believe it had happened even with the evidence right in front of our eyes, but Atlanta played spoiler against a cratering Buccaneers team despite setting a franchise record for penalties. Bewildering, and an upending of an all-too-familiar story I blessedly did not have to write.
It was a team win that was nearly a team loss, but Kirk Cousins, Bijan Robinson, Kyle Pitts, and David Sills did a ton of heavy lifting. Despite a nasty drop we’ll discuss later, Sills put together his most productive game in Atlanta, with six receptions for 78 yards. Bijan had a rough fumble—again—but put up 175 combined yards and a touchdown, turning a bunch of nothing there plays into significant gains. Cousins missed some throws and nearly fumbled away the game at the end when he was sacked and stripped from behind, but continued to be Tampa Bay’s bogeyman by carving up their secondary most of the evening to the tune of 373 yards and three touchdowns. And Pitts had a career night where he looked like a kaiju towering over frantic Buccaneers defenders, outrunning, outjumping, and outworking the secondary all night to the tune of 11 catches, 166 yards, and three touchdowns.
The defense got in on the fun in fits and starts, too, with the pass rush cooking up five sacks and several errant Baker Mayfield throws; James Pearce Jr. set the franchise rookie record for sacks by getting his 7th and 8th, surpassing Mike Green’s 1983 total. Dee Alford atoned for a tough night from the secondary by picking off Mayfield, a critical turnover that quite literally saved the game, and the run defense largely put the brakes on a very talented group that includes Bucky Irving and Rachaad White.
All of these heroics were necessary because this was still very much a 2025 Falcons game, something no one should have any illusions about. Atlanta committed a franchise-record 19 penalties, their highest single game total ever and the highest league-wide since 2019, and had a costly fumble, a number of nasty coverage lapses, and even Zane Gonzalez goofing up a kickoff and giving Tampa Bay quality field position. They avoided...
