The Falcoholic
It’s a rematch, this time in Atlanta. The Falcons host the 5-5 Panthers with revenge on their mind after Carolina humiliated them by the score of 30-0 last time out.
This game should be—hast to be!—very different for both teams. Here’s what you need to know about Week 11.
When these two teams first met, it was easy to write off the Panthers as a bad team. They are kind of a bad team, even if a couple of scrappy victories have lifted them to .500, but the Falcons look like a bad team right now, too.
Atlanta has a major advantage on turnovers, both created and surrendered, and have the clearer superior pass defense and ability to move the ball between the 20s, even though that has cratered at times of late. But otherwise these teams are quite close together, and Atlanta boasts a demonstrably worse run defense. This isn’t the game it has been in past years, where the Falcons have lost despite being more talented and having more wins; Carolina has been able to punch Atlanta in the nose regularly regardless.
They haven’t all that much. Not surprising, right?
Rico Dowdle has officially taken over as the lead back, Jalen Coker is off injured reserve, and the Panthers went on a mini tear with three wins in a row against the Cowboys, Dolphins, and Jets, and stunned the Packers 16-13 to get to five wins, but against legitimate competition they’ve been blown out. The Patriots beat them 42-13 the week after the Falcons lost, and the Bills smashed them 40-9. Hell, they just lost 17-7 to the Saints.
Teams seem to be figuring out what to do with the Panthers, who are almost wholly dependent on Dowdle and Chuba Hubbard week-to-week outside of a few nice passes from Bryce Young to Tet McMillan, but the Falcons have had their struggles stopping Young. Will that continue?
This game matters so much more than it should. The Panthers are faring better than expected even if I wouldn’t call them good, the Falcons are three games under .500 and 0-2 against the NFC South, and a Carolina win and Falcons loss would mean the Falcons were essentially completely doomed in the division. I’ll let Adnan Ikic sketch that out further, but I can’t impress upon you how critical a win is here. A loss ends the season in every way except the one where the Falcons still have to play seven more games.
The critically important thing here is to show up against the run, something the Falcons couldn’t do last week against the Colts. The first time these two teams met, the Falcons did a solid job on a down-by-down basis but were ground up by 29 carries that went for 111 yards and a Young touchdown, allowing Carolina to control the pace of the game and wait for Atlanta...
