The Falcoholic
The Atlanta Falcons 2025 season is dead, and will be neither lamented nor missed. The season will be survived by its fans and its schedule, which ensures the team will shuffle zombie-like through four more games, but make no mistake: It is dead.
The Falcons will not make the playoffs for the eighth straight season, which we can now say with 100% confidence instead of just 99.9% confidence. They locked up an eighth straight losing season with this one, too, a run of futility they’ve only managed one other time in franchise history. They suffered their worst home loss since 2014, their third loss this season by 20-plus points, and their second straight loss to Seattle by 20-plus points.
What makes it just that little bit tougher is that the Falcons actually hung in there in the first half. The game was tied 6-6 and the Falcons had sacked Sam Darnold twice, picked him off, and forced off-balance throws while stopping the run. That made it 6-6—the Falcons offense was predictably plodding, though a bad call cost them a touchdown—and gave them a shot at making it a competitive game the rest of the way.
But it wasn’t to be. Instead, all the problems that have wounded Atlanta throughout the season proved fatal. They allowed a long kickoff return for a touchdown, the defense failed to tackle and suffered too many miscues in coverage, and the offense was mired in missed passes, bobbles and drops, penalties on the line. When the dust settled, the Falcons had lost by a score of 37-9, having picked up just one field goal and turning the ball over three times in a nightmare game against a tough opponent.
We expected this, of course. We expected the Falcons to lose and probably lose by a lot, given how good the Seahawks are, but their first half was another maddening glimpse of what this team could have been in some alternate universe. Instead, what we have is the Falcons team we saw lose this game: Undisciplined, poorly coached, not as talented as we might have wanted them to be, prone to major errors, injured, and frankly tired-looking. They’re a bad football team, and all we’ll really remember about 2025 someday is all the losing, the injuries, and maybe the promise that wilted so quickly and so decisively.
The Falcons have so much to do this offseason, but they must finish the final four games before they can start in earnest. There’s little sense in keeping anyone around with this team, even though I have don’t know whether Arthur Blank is leaning toward keeping Raheem Morris and Terry Fontenot, and at the very least the roster will churn and the non-Jeff Ulbrich coordinators will be gone. Regardless of what the specific moves prove to be, the Falcons have forgotten how to win and have become far too comfortable and familiar with losing. Until they find the moves that revivify this franchise, the only things deader than this...
