Falcons vs. Vikings recap: Falling down the stairs with knives in both hands

All of the team’s worst habits rear their ugly hydra heads again, and the Falcons now are in freefall.

This is an Atlanta Falcons team in big trouble. Once 6-3 and easily leading the NFC South, the Falcons just relinquished the divisional lead after losing their fourth straight, a miserable 42-21 effort against the Minnesota Vikings where a game first half transformed into a nightmare second half.

This a team too talented to be awful, but too error-prone and inconsistent to be anywhere near great. We got that sobering reminder after the rough Saints loss, had it reinforced by the blowout Broncos humiliation, had it reinforced again by a mind-boggling Chargers defeat, and had reality grab us by the collar and shake us with that Vikings loss. The Falcons will probably win at least two of their final four games because of the easy schedule ahead of them, but expecting more than that when Kirk Cousins is lobbing easy interceptions, receivers are dropping easy catches, and the defense is allowing five touchdown passes to Sam Darnold—that’s a career-high!—is simply not wise and won’t be encouraged here.

As I alluded to in the title, this game was like falling down the stairs with knives in both hands. The damage from the Vikings kicking them down the stairs was going to be bad enough, and indeed we expected Minnesota to win given that they’re a very good team with an aggressive defense and an explosive offense. The problem is that with those knives, the Falcons did a gruesome amount of damage to themselves. You cannot have three turnovers and that many penalty yards and expect to win; the Falcons couldn’t even make it close in the end. It turned a loss that we might have expected into one that felt like a crisis for entirely different reasons (mostly) than the Chargers loss felt like a crisis.

And yes, good moments existed, from the ground game impressing against a terrific Vikings runs defense to Ray-Ray McCloud’s career day as a receiver to the pass rush collecting four sacks, and we won’t gloss over those down below. But this Falcons team is shaky as hell right now, and the Falcons coaching staff and players that have promised us they’re still alive have to now tell us—and more importantly, show us—how that can possibly be. We can both know that the Giants, Raiders, and Panthers offer opportunities for wins and that Washington is an opponent you can triumph over on a good day and doubt that these Falcons have that sort of run in them.

I keep circling back to the final four games because it’s all that’s left. The Falcons have put themselves in a position where even winning out may not be enough, but that’s the only thing they can possibly control, a direct result of their crippling inability to deliver big efforts over the last month. This game was one of the toughest of the year for Atlanta, but seeing them go from four sacks early on to having absolutely nothing late and a complete collapse by the secondary meant all the good from the Falcons defense a week ago was swiftly forgotten. The fact that Cousins in a big return to Minnesota played better than last week but still turned it over twice on a pair of interceptions and managed zero touchdowns meant the calls for Michael Penix and the scrutiny for this passing game’s dysfunction will continue. And Ray-Ray McCloud’s fumble on a kick return means special teams does not escape blame for this result yet again.

It was, in short, a complete team loss, one that hangs heavily on a coaching staff with no answers and players who keep committing unforgivable mistakes and penalties over and over again. The epitaph for the Falcons from 2018 to 2023 was that they too frequently got in their own way and ruined opportunities with ill-timed errors of execution, boneheaded coaching decisions, or both. For a team that has been through scores of coordinators and three different head coaches over that span, not to mention five different starting quarterbacks and a raft of free agents and draft picks, the fact that this all feels far too familiar is an indictment of everyone that has helped to build, coach, and play for the Falcons on a weekly basis.

All that’s really left to say is that I am weary in my bones of the losses, and beyond ready to see real improvement instead of post-mortems that suggest improvement that never comes.

Here’s the full recap.

The Good

• That was one of the best opening drives we’ve seen from this team in 2024. Aside from Bijan Robinson getting dropped and Ray-Ray McCloud dropping one of his inevitable screen passes, the team was confident and competent, with Kirk Cousins firing darts to Darnell Mooney, Drake London, and McCloud, while Robinson had a couple of nice runs, the pass protection held up, and Tyler Allgeier bullied his way into the end zone to cap it off with a touchdown. Considering the opponent and the stakes, it was a terrific start.
• Bijan Robinson did very well considering the opponent, and so did Tyler Allgeier. The duo was facing the #1 run defense in football and had their share of negative or go-nowhere plays, as you’d expect, but they also managed to pick up many chunk plays on the ground and were sitting at 137 combined yards and a pair of touchdowns at the end of the third quarter. Robinson finished with 92 yards on 22 carries and Allgeier had 63 on nine totes, and even if they faded out of the game plan as the Falcons tried to play catch up, I tip my cap to them.
• Enormous credit to the run blocking, which despite a few negative plays early on discovered their form and kept opening considerable lanes for Robinson and Allgeier. Had it not been for the all-too-frequent holding calls, we would have called this one of their better games of the entire season.
• This was the Ray-Ray McCloud game as a receiver. Outside of a frustrating drop early on, McCloud was a favored target and a big play author, catching seven balls for 89 yards and routinely picking up big yardage working over the middle.
• Darnell Mooney re-emerged in this one, making three big catches in the first half alone and finishing the day with an eye-popping 142 yards on six grabs; you wish he could have been even more involved given how many big plays he made downfield. He and Drake London, who made several tough grabs for 70 yards on five catches, took advantage of a lot of sharp throws from Cousins to arrive at big days.
• And the frustrating thing is, Cousins was better. He was dealing at times in this one, throwing for 344 yards on 37 attempts and having more success downfield than we’ve seen from him in weeks. Between the 20s, at least, he was a better version of himself and should have had a touchdown pass to Kyle Pitts late had his tight end not failed to come up with it; the problem was that the big day was undercut by his mistakes. Still, I suspect Morris and company saw enough to keep Cousins installed as they chase the Buccaneers down the stretch, even though this is still closer to a bottom of the barrel quarterback over the last month than the Cousins the Falcons thought they had.
• The pass rush appears to be coming alive for real, though only in spurts. On Minnesota’s first drive, Eddie Goldman (!) blew into the backfield after clubbing his way by a hapless blocker and took Sam Darnold down, and then Arnold Ebiketie followed with a nasty rip move to get in and take Darnold down again on the very next play. A Matthew Judon sack in the second quarter followed as he cleaned up pressure, and Kaden Elliss turned a long string of pressures into an actual sack in the third quarter. Whatever these players and Jimmy Lake have done since the bye is working like gangbusters, even if things slowed down in the second half.
• I’d single out Kaden Elliss for praise in particular, because with more blitzing opportunities and an ability to freelance a bit, he’s been superlative in recent weeks. In this one, he put up ten tackles, a sack, two quarterback hits, and a tackle for loss, flying all over the field and proving to be one of Atlanta’s only consistently disruptive defenders.
• A.J. Terrell is the other defender who deserves outsized praise, as he simply shut down Justin Jefferson. The Falcons struggled mightily in coverage all day, but Terrell did his job and shut down his man all day long. Some early season struggles have given way to pretty good week-to-week results here.
• The schedule gets easier from here, at least? We’re back to straw grasping.

The Ugly

• Pressure forced Cousins to make some ugly throws and (with weird consistency) throw balls right at defenders, resulting in tipped passes. But Cousins had time on his first quarter interception, in part thanks to an impressive block by Bijan Robinson that put a man in the dirt. Cousins didn’t have Bijan in the flat, in part because of the block, and needed to toss it away without anyone open. Instead, he settled in and threw it right to a defender underneath Drake London, the latest in a series of picks where Cousins is simply not seeing what he needs to see. Later on, he overthrew Kyle Pitts badly for another interception, and finished the day with (I’m guesstimating) about five turnover-worthy plays mixed in to an otherwise solid day, including a near pick-six to Andrew Van Ginkel. Cousins was improved on Sunday on balance, but he still wasn’t good despite the gaudy yardage numbers, and that is one of the heaviest weights around this team’s neck.
• Kyle Pitts was overthrown on one target and made one grab, but he also had two bad drops, including one in the end zone where it hit him in the hands near the end of the game. Pitts has not been getting enough run for being open in recent weeks; this time he did get looks but made mistakes, which is not going to help him earn more. He’s clearly not going to become a major part of the offense, but if he did, there’s no guarantee Pitts would excel with that additional target share. It’s a depressing reality, and you have to wonder if he and the team part ways in the offseason despite Atlanta picking up his fifth year option.
• So many things had to go wrong on Jordan Addison’s first quarter touchdown that it’s almost not worth recounting, but here we go. Had Sam Darnold not thrown an absolute duck, the pass is likely broken up, or at least heavily contested by Mike Hughes. Because it was so underthrown and Jordan Addison was the only one who noticed, Hughes simply lost him. Then Justin Simmons came in at a bad angle and missed the tackle badly, allowing Addison to jog in to the end zone basically uncontested. There’s some blame to go around for both Hughes and Simmons, but on a better-thrown ball that simply doesn’t happen, so I guess we just have to chalk it.
• The Falcons did it again in the third quarter on that touchdown bomb to Justin Jefferson. On that play, Justin Simmons blitzed and simply couldn’t get near Darnold, who managed to keep the play alive long enough to bomb one downfield…to a wide open Jefferson thanks to Dee Alford, who was inexplicably behind, turned the wrong way, and then fell down. It takes multiple failures for big plays like that to happen—though Alford appeared to be pretty damn responsible for that one—and the Falcons doing it twice in one game against one of the league’s best big play offenses sucks.
• The secondary was just bad. A.J. Terrell did a superlative job against Justin Jefferson, but that effort was wasted by Mike Hughes lapses, Clark Phillips lapses, Justin Simmons misadventures at every level, and Dee Alford struggling mightily. This was the best passing attack the Falcons were going to face the rest of the way and looked like it, but it never should have been this good. Any time you get players falling down on multiple deep balls, you’re having a rough day.
• The self-inflicted mistakes added up again on Sunday. The Falcons went from a punt on the 13 in the second quarter to a 4th and 2 they wanted to try for, but they failed to get the play off and got a delay of game, forcing another punt that went for a touchback instead. Then the team got called for defensive holding on the Vikings second quarter field goal try, turning three points into a new set of downs and ultimately a touchdown to Justin Jefferson, widening the gap. Holding calls added to the misery, as the team was hit over and over again for those, including a backbreaking one in the third quarter on Drew Dalman. That’s a trend line for a team that undercuts its own strong blocking with unnecessary holding calls, especially egregious on plays where Bijan would have managed positive yardage without them. This team can win games if they’re relatively mistake-free; it’s much dicier when they’re getting nailed with those penalties. Their 127 penalty yards were the most a single team has managed in the NFL this year.
• One of the biggest errors? McCloud, who was so good as a receiver, took it past the 30 yard line but then fumbled it on a fourth quarter kickoff return with the Falcons down seven, giving the Vikings the ball in plus territory. That’s the kind of mistake the Falcons make far too often and undercuts all the good work they do, and it’s why I have dubbed McCloud such a chaotic player. It’s big plays or big mistakes with him.
• I hated that defensive holding call, by the way, because it certainly looked like a borderline call at best and was hugely consequential. NFL referees are not trusted because they so often manufacture or miss calls that are easy to see, and this was another example, as was the call on Dalman given that it was difficult to see as a genuine hold. I’m getting tired of it playing a major role in games across the league on a weekly basis, but you can’t say it lost the Falcons the game with a straight face here even if it certainly didn’t help the effort.
• Early in the season when the Falcons were avoiding major mistakes and hanging tough in squeakers, I thought the many fingers pointing at Raheem Morris and his coaching staff were unreasonable. Now, though? It’s hard not to point the finger at Morris, Zac Robinson, and Jimmy Lake, who have to be ultimately accountable for this team’s failings and are now mired in a four game losing streak where the number of mistakes have been simply absurd. The Falcons not getting a play off on fourth down when they accepted a penalty and lined up to go for it, the sheer number of awful penalties on Atlanta throughout this one, and the overall sloppiness of the entire operation is on a coaching staff that keeps promising better but can’t seem to deliver it. I don’t think the Falcons will make sweeping changes in the first year on the job for this staff, but the team’s brass made a change thinking they’d get much better without Arthur Smith at the helm. That is far from a guarantee at this point, and over the final games and into the offseason, this team’s leaders have to show they’re capable of pulling themselves out of disastrous territory and avoiding dipping back into it.

The Wrapup

Game MVP

The ground game wins the day for both scores on Atlanta’s side and an admirable performance against the top run defense in the league, and that trophy can be shared by Robinson, Allgeier, and this offensive line.

One Takeaway

This Falcons team is defined by the number and importance of their mistakes; whether it’s interceptions or penalties, they screw themselves out of victories and competitive games over and over again. The fact that we’re this late in the season and this is still happening is a bitter disappointment.

Next Week

A Monday night game on the road against a woeful Raiders team the Buccaneers just beat. If they don’t win this one, I’m comfortable saying the season is over.

Final Word

Embarrassing.