The Falcoholic
Everything we thought the Falcons would be good at this year and everything they have actually been good at this year was absent Sunday, the latest in a growing series of deeply disappointing 2025 performances. Atlanta has now lost in brutal, demoralizing fashion twice against two teams that are among the bottom third of the league in the Panthers and Dolphins, with complete team failure defining both losses.
A season that started with a vision of what the Falcons could be has quickly become another deflating campaign that has revealed what the Falcons are, which is a flawed team that can’t seem to survive injuries or adversity. It’s early in the season to say the Falcons are cooked, but they certainly look cooked. Their favor with the fanbase is burnt to a crisp, at the very least.
The quality of the opponent is what makes this truly unforgivable. The same team that handled the Bills and Commanders got the 1-6 Dolphins at home and were outworked, outplayed, and outcoached in every facet of the game. They lost by 24 points, and after two colliding Falcons defenders turned a would-be interception into an incompletion that enabled an easy field goal to extend Miami’s lead, it never felt particularly close. Tua Tagovailoa was able to follow up one of the worst games of his career with four touchdowns, the defense barely challenged Miami’s ground game for long stretches, and the offense appeared to be entirely made of go-nowhere carries, listless screens, and short passes. Throw in a bunch of penalties, especially on special teams and offense, and the Falcons had no shot to win this one. They looked, frankly, like the worst team on the field by a very wide margin.
As a result, it feels like a time where few takes are too hyperbolic. We’ve been frustrated with Terry Fontenot’s inconsistent track record in the draft in particular, with Raheem Morris’s in-game management and inconsistent ability to get his team playing at a high level, and Zac Robinson’s extremely iffy offense throughout the last year and a half, but they’re reaching new lows. The fact that this team feels as broken as the aging, creaky, and thin 2021 roster in year one of Arthur Smith’s tenure right now is a damning indictment of an entire organization, and I no longer think Raheem Morris and Terry Fontenot can survive a losing season when they’re losing like this. There is far more talent here than there was a few years back, certainly enough that the Falcons should not look like the league’s worst team two weeks in a single season.
There’s a slim but non-zero chance that Robinson is fired right now, given that Fontenot and Morris have handed him too many playmakers for the offense to be this anemic. The fact that it’s hardly all his fault is not really relevant to the outcome here; the Falcons can’t abide this kind of losing much longer without the need to make some kind...
