The Falcoholic
We’re closing in on the end of the season. What might happen when it’s over?
We all know where the Atlanta Falcons stand today. Just 6-7 and in the midst of a four game losing streak, Atlanta’s season is not yet toast but is starting to smell like toast.
Their only way out is to win, and they may need to win all four games to have a realistic chance of making the postseason. Their only open avenues are passing the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (who are racking up injuries but have an easy schedule after this weekend’s Chargers tilt) or grabbing the seventh seed away from the Commanders by beating them, getting some significant help in the form of additional losses for the Rams, Commanders and Cardinals, and probably still winning out. That’s not an easy road, either way.
With that in mind, you might have been turning over in your head what’s actually at stake for these Falcons. Will everyone be fired if this team goes 8-9? Will Kirk Cousins stay as the starting quarterback in 2025 if he stumbles down the stretch? Could a middling result see assistant coaches or even the front office in trouble? The playoffs are likely a salve that keeps anything like that from happen, but here are some thoughts regarding what might happen if the Falcons do fall short, especially if they continue stumbling over the final four games.
This is simply the most straightforward and immediate stake. Win three or four of your final four games and get a little break with Tampa Bay dropping one or two, and the Falcons win the NFC South and make the playoffs for the first time since 2017. Fail to do so and even if you finish 9-8 or even 10-7, the season may end in the bitter disappointment of not making the postseason.
This team was built to make the playoffs, right now. Arthur Smith and Terry Fontenot finally stopped dancing around expectations in 2023 and clearly pushed their chips in; a third straight 7-10 season got Smith fired. Another offseason of big spending and a new staff was supposed to set Atlanta up to make a postseason push, and falling short again will be an unhappy result for just about everybody.
All other results below flow downstream from this. You can basically take everything else off the table if the Falcons do make the playoffs, even as a lowly seventh seed, because Atlanta’s waited so long for this. If they make it and actually win a game, there might be a small parade.
The Falcons have made it beyond clear that they want to roll with Kirk Cousins, to the point where it feels uncomfortably like they’re coddling him. Cousins has been brutally bad over much of the past month, and he wasn’t even pulled in garbage time to give Michael Penix some run because...
