The Atlanta Falcons entered 2024 with extremely high expectations to establish control of the NFC South early, but perhaps they shouldn’t have.
Losing to a Pittsburgh Steelers team with the coach they just fired (Arthur Smith) calling plays and the quarterback they didn’t want twice (Justin Fields) getting the win is a very Atlanta thing to have happened.
Let’s just face the facts; the football gods typically like to get a chuckle in against the Falcons in moments like this. It’s just how life goes in Flowery Branch.
While the Atlanta defense didn’t let up a touchdown all game and got great pressure in key moments, the offense looked absolutely overwhelmed by one of the best defenses in the league. Quarterback Kirk Cousins signed a massive deal to get the Falcons back to the playoffs, and he looked as rusty as he has in his career coming off an Achilles tear in a new scheme.
The Falcons (particularly right tackle Kaleb McGary) had no answers for Pittsburgh’s smothering defensive front, as outside linebacker T.J. Watt looked like the best player on the field on multiple sequences.
Cousins went 16-for-26 in the game for 155 yards, a touchdown to tight end Kyle Pitts and two very ugly interceptions thrown while he was getting clobbered by the Steelers defensive front. There were moments where he looked like the veteran signal caller Atlanta signed to fix its offense, and there were moments where he looked like a less-mobile Desmond Ridder.
Coming off an Achilles tear is hard enough for a quarterback like Cousins, much less one that is 36 years old and playing in a new scheme with a new team. For all the hope that the Falcons would hit the ground running, a largely anemic offense and a rusty Cousins felt like a comet to the face for Atlanta and puts the team in a tough spot for the month of September.
While Cousins’ prime-time reputation is more anecdotal than backed by evidence, Atlanta facing the Philadelphia Eagles on the road and the Kansas City Chiefs at home under the big lights feels like a very tall task if this offense can’t get things figured out in a hurry. A New Orleans Saints team that just beat the brakes off the Carolina Panthers now looks much more formidable in Week 4 than it did for the Falcons a day ago, and a Week 5 Thursday night game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers waits after that.
Going 0-5 would officially squash all of the goodwill the Falcons entered 2024 with and might even spark calls for Atlanta to bench Cousins for rookie quarterback Michael Penix Jr. As Falcon-y as that sounds, that also doesn’t seem particularly reasonable for what the team is capable of at the moment.
The defense, particularly defensive tackle Grady Jarrett and outside linebacker Matt Judon, inspired plenty reasons for confidence on that side of the ball against a run-heavy Steelers team. That unit will only get stronger as time goes on, as will the pretty impressive special teams play.
The offense is just going to take its time to gel. Last season, Ridder was the Falcons’ starter and flashed moments of brilliance and absolute disaster in equal measure. The problem for Atlanta that season is that it didn’t know what it had in Ridder for the long haul, and what it ultimately had was a turnover-prone third-round pick who could impress and frustrate in equal measure and who stayed who he was all season long.
Cousins, on the other hand, is a more-known commodity. In retrospect, it makes much more sense for the former Minnesota Vikings quarterback to settle into his new offense once he gets into a better rhythm with his teammate and feels more comfortable coming off his Achilles injury. The schedule lightens up for Atlanta in a substantial way after Week 5, and that’s around the time when Cousins should technically be much more himself.
The Falcons started the season 2-0 last season and only won five games after that, losing some absolute head-scratchers in the process and sparking the end of the previous coaching regime. This team may weather a tough start to the season with Cousins in transition and a new coaching staff trying to figure things out. Unlike Ridder and company, this Falcons team feels much more poised to finish strong and play meaningful games in the winter than the previous ones. It just might take them a second to get their feet under them with one of the tougher schedules to start the season in the NFL.
If you expected this Falcons team to be a 12/13-win destroyer of worlds, Week 1 is as good an example as any that those hopes might be a bit far-fetched for a team that just fired its coaching staff. If you expected this Falcons team to potentially win 9/10 games and contend in the NFC South, one rough game and one dusty offense won’t derail that in the slightest.
If you now expect the Falcons to be one of the worst teams in the NFL, consider the context of this loss and get back with us in two months. By then, we’re expecting Atlanta to be much more what it can be as opposed to what it is right now. It’ll take some time, some work and some patience, but the future still feels bright for this team… even if it might take a little time for this new iterations of the Falcons to get there.
Don’t make this team your Super Bowl pick, but don’t count them out, either. We have a good feeling Cousins and the Dirty Birds will figure things out… eventually.
