Falcons vs. Eagles recap: Sweet, sweet victory

We all saw it coming, didn’t we? When the Philadelphia Eagles capped off a long, frustrating scoring drive and then punched in a two point conversion to take a three point lead, there was a sense that the same old Atlanta Falcons anti-magic was at work. Despite fighting like hell and showing impressive resolve and hanging in, the Falcons were going to need a miracle to win. After a drive where mishaps featured and the team couldn’t convert a fourth down, the Eagles had the ball and a chance to salt it away. It felt, as it so often has in recent years, like it was over.

But then, somehow, it wasn’t. I’ll admit to a stirring of hope when Saquon Barkley dropped a third down pass he should have had, forcing the Eagles to settle for a field goal with enough time on the clock for the Falcons to score even without any timeouts. It was a big ask and a big dream, but it felt like it was a shade less than impossible. I held my breath, and reader, I did not really breathe again for several minutes.

That’s because the Falcons tapped into something incredible. With the Eagles seemingly deathly afraid of the knockout punch, the Falcons jabbed, jabbed, and jabbed again, picking up huge chunks of yardage as Kirk Cousins entered some zone I don’t think we mortals can tap into. He capped off a lightning-fast, productive drive with a touchdown pass to Drake London, who was penalized for a celebration but still got to watch Younghoe Koo drove home the longer-than-usual extra point to give Atlanta a one point lead. It was, as Raheem Morris said after the game, practically a symphony in the form of an offensive drive.

A couple plays later, pressure got home on Jalen Hurts and he threw his inevitable interception to cap things off, with Jessie Bates (who else?) sprinting to make it happen and seal the game. With speed that set our heads spinning, the Falcons took our expectations and the seemingly inevitable ending of this game and upended them ferociously, earning a critical and impressive last-second road win over one of the NFC’s best teams. I have a bunch of sad tweets I’m going to leave up to remind myself to Never Give Up (TM), because suddenly a world of possibility seems open to this football team.

Was it perfect? No. Cousins was shaky at times, especially early on, and at some point I need to know what was going through Darnell Mooney’s head when he came up short on a critical deep ball that could’ve helped end this one sooner. The run defense was getting splintered to smithereens in the early going by Saquon Barkley and then run over with Jalen Hurts putting the hurt on them far too often for my liking later on. There were mistakes this team will want back and improvement to target, and to his eternal credit, that’s what Cousins was focused on immediately after a game where he did damned impressive things to will this team to a win.

A loss here would have left this team reeling and heading for a tough matchup against the Chiefs, but a win of this caliber and this power feels like it could flip the script and put Atlanta on the path to the kind of season we all hoped for. If nothing else, it is a glorious moment where the Falcons won a game they typically lose, and it gave us a glimpse at what could be if they can build on what we saw last night. It was the Falcons pulling off the seemingly impossible comeback. We have not had enough of it, so drink deeply.

On to the full recap.

The Good

• The ground game came to life in this one against an Eagles front that wasn’t nearly as stout at the point of attack as Pittsburgh’s. Bijan Robinson ripped off multiple pretty runs with good blocking, Tyler Allgeier rumbled for multiple big pickups, and the team was moving well at the end of the first half. Somehow they came out of the half moving it even better, with Robinson picking up yards seemingly at will and Allgeier doing more of his customary rumbling, setting the Falcons up inside the 10 yard line before a little slowdown and a third down sack forced them to settle for a field goal. The duo combined for 150 yards on just 23 carries, signaling that this is absolutely one of the league’s best running back combinations, and the justified focus of this offense going forward.
• Kirk Cousins got rolling in the second half, and the two most impressive plays were back-to-back balls over the middle of the field. The first saw Cousins stand tall despite pressure around him to deliver a strike to Ray-Ray McCloud for a first down, and the second was a nice ball over the middle to Darnell Mooney, who broke a halfhearted tackle attempt from Chauncey Gardner-Johnson and scampered for the touchdown, complete with a flip into the end zone at the end of the play. Clearly feeling it, Cousins took a deep shot that fell incomplete before he got one final chance to win the game and was absolutely perfect, dealing zippy passes all over to get the Falcons downfield with time ticking down and in the end zone. The improvement in mobility, decision-making, and just chucking the dang football from Cousins were all encouraging for the immediate future, at the very least, and if he’s a work in progress it suddenly seems as though the veteran quarterback will be what the Falcons hope he can be sooner than later. He was, for shining stretches, that player already on Monday night.
• Drake London’s touchdown grab and key final drive catch were great. The Falcons still need to utilize him more, but as is so often the case, when London is targeted he makes the most of them. Nobody was taking that score away from him.
• Ray-Ray McCloud and Darnell Mooney both made egregious decisions—McCloud an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty, Mooney a weirdly abbreviated route, both of which we’ll discuss below—but they also came up big when it mattered. McCloud is proving to be a powerful presence over the middle of the field, and he scooped up three key receptions for 42 yards. Mooney was lights out when he needed to be, including on a 41 yard touchdown grab and two critical catches on the game’s final drive for Atlanta, finishing with 88 yards on just three grabs. They’ll both learn from the mistakes, one hopes, but the two of them were vital to the victory and deserve an enormous amount of credit for their catches.
• The offensive line was overmatched last week against Pittsburgh, but not so on Monday. Aside from a couple of shaky pass protection reps and a handful of times they were overpowered, including on a crucial fourth down, the Falcons line did surprisingly terrific work against a fearsome Eagles front. They largely gave Cousins time to operate, opened up huge lanes for Bijan and Allgeier to work with, and were forces for good that enabled the winning effort. That improvement will be a bit underrated with Cousins and the ground game shining the way they did, but it shouldn’t be.
• The big hand-wringing over Zac Robinson was justified given how predictable and frustrating the play calling was in Week 1, but as I wrote in the roundtable about our level of concern, it was one game and I had faith Robinson would figure things out. While the results were a bit uneven and some of the goal line play calling was frustrating—slow-developing passing plays?—the strides were evident and the potential was intriguing. Robinson continually dialed up working running plays, did a nice job of keeping Cousins clean, and seemingly got more comfortable dialing up shots as the game wore on. The final drive of the game was an absolute masterclass in taking what the defense gives you and giving Cousins quality looks, and the training wheels are emphatically off what looked like an unsteady Week 1 bicycle. As Robinson gets even more comfortable and figures out ways to get the likes of Drake London and Kyle Pitts more involved, this offense figures to be genuinely dangerous on a weekly basis.
• Matthew Judon hasn’t been wrecking games by himself, but he’s now turned in big plays in back-to-back weeks with a half-sack in Week 1 and a full one this week against Jalen Hurts, not to mention some key plays in run support. The Falcons went and traded for him in the hopes that he would provide a shaky EDGE group with more pass rushing punch and capable run defense, and so far, so good for the veteran.
• There were frustrating moments working against DeVonta Smith, but with A.J. Brown out of the game, the Falcons secondary took pains to keep things in front of them and largely did so. Big hits from Dee Alford and A.J. Terrell—even if the former had his scuffles in coverage—and fine work on the back end from the team’s safety trio made a huge difference in this one. I especially liked seeing Richie Grant doing vital work in coverage early on in the back of the end zone to prevent a score.
• Jessie Bates, playmaker. In this one, it was a vital moment when Jalen Hurts was targeting DeVonta Smith in the end zone on third down in the third quarter, and the ball was just a little high. Bates came in like a missile to deliver the hit and break up the pass, turning a would-be go-ahead touchdown into a ball that fluttered harmlessly to the turf. And then, of course, when Jalen Hurts was hit and the ball soared a little bit on him, Bates was the man who was running like hell to intercept it and seal the game. Free agent signings so rarely work out the way you want them to; few big name acquisitions actually exceed your expectations. Bates is one of them, happily.
• Younghoe Koo did everything asked of him in this one with zero fuss and drama, an ideal day at the office for a kicker. Need a couple field goals? Sure. Have to make a long extra pointer after a penalty to ensure the win with an angry crowd on the road? You got it. Koo is in a groove, and I hope he stays there.
• You really can’t say enough about what this meant for Raheem Morris and this team, with the head coach obviously and deservedly delighted at the podium after the game. This is a franchise which has been on the other end of all these difficult losses all these many years, especially in the past decade, and coming out of this with a victory may or may not be a tide turner but was a joyous occasion regardless. The Week 1 debacle on offense put this team immediately on the defensive, but it’s to Morris’s credit in particular that this team rebounded so nicely and won this one the way they did.

The Ugly

• The early rust from Kirk Cousins sparked real fear, as he missed a couple of gimme throws, one that almost was picked off by Quinyon Mitchell. We may see some slow starts to games for a little longer as Cousins works his way all the way back, but happily those blips were relatively few and far between after the first half.
• Bijan is excellent, but he’s also prone to frustrating lapses, including a drive-killing drop similar to the one Barkley had at the end of the game, albeit in a less critical situation. One of those occurred right after Tyler Allgeier strung together productive plays in the second quarter, when Bijan saw a defender in front of him and took the handoff with the wrong hand and fumbled it. To his credit, he managed to fall on it, but that and a stumble on the next carry that yielded just two yards effectively killed the Falcons drive and made sure Atlanta was settling for a field goal. Robinson does so many things well that it almost seems unfair to complain, but as a would-be legend in this game, he needs to clean up the small things to unlock his full potential.
• Darnell Mooney had the play of the game with his touchdown grab, but he also had a deeply inexplicable play in the fourth quarter. Cousins looked for him deep downfield and uncorked one, but Mooney had for some reason slowed way down on his route and could only watch as the ball sailed way over his head. I don’t know if that was by design or Mooney making a decision, but either way, it cost the Falcons a massive, potentially game-changing play in the moment. Just don’t let it happen again and we’re cool.
• For a defense that played well throughout most of the first half, the Jalen Hurts scrambles that led to an Eagles touchdown drive were incredibly frustrating. Hurts got loose on 4th and 3rd and made it 15 yards, but the most egregious was a third down play where the Falcons appeared to pull up expecting a slide and Hurts turned what should have been a field goal try into a first down, extending a drive that resulted in six. Atlanta has always struggled with scrambling quarterbacks, and once Hurts got moving, they struggled again. That plus struggles to contain the admittedly great Barkley on the ground throughout this one—the two combined for 180 yards on 35 rushes—made me very glad we’re seeing a banged- up running back room in Kansas City next.
• The run defense in general is supposed to be one of this team’s strengths, but the loss of Nate Landman hurt a little and the quality of the opponent hurt a lot. While the Falcons had their nice run stops and held up better early, things started to go off the rails a bit in the second half, with Hurts running at will and Barkley picking up chunk yardage when he wanted to. That led to successful Eagles drives that kept them in the game.
• Chauncey Gardner-Johnson is a master goader, prone to trying to provoke opposing players into making hot-headed mistakes. He got Ray-Ray McCloud right after McCloud made a nice catch over the middle by yanking on the receiver’s mouthpiece, with both players jawing before McCloud threw what the officiating crew clearly thought was a punch, albeit a light one. The first down stood, but it backed up the Falcons with two minutes to go when they were driving. I don’t blame McCloud one bit for being ticked off, but the Falcons can’t make those kinds of mistakes when the stakes are high early in the season.
• Most of the takes have aged in hideous fashion, which I love. I thought it was unreasonable to ask the Falcons to improve drastically enough on offense and hold up enough on defense to win in Philadelphia, where they’ve historically struggled, and I think most fans and nearly all analysts agreed. Yet the Falcons have shown that the vaunted resilience they’ve been chasing and the ability they were craving is there, and they unlocked those qualities far more quickly than I think any of us could have anticipated. I’ll happily, happily admit I was wrong, and I hope that the shadow of doubt motivates them to far greater heights from here.

The Wrapup

Game MVP

You could give it to Zac Robinson for the game he called, Bijan Robinson for the work as the offensive centerpiece, or Darnell Mooney for the massive gains. I’m going to hand this one to Kirk Cousins, who was basically left for dead a week ago and dug deep to improve by leaps and bounds not just over Week 1 but throughout this game, culminating in a balls of steel game-winning drive. Nice work, Kirk.

One Takeaway

This Falcons team might just have that extra edge and the ability to hang in and deliver a win, and while we’re not going to get heroics and big victories every week, the mere fact that they have such a flame burning within them is enough reason to believe that we may just get the kind of season we’ve been dreaming of.

Next Week

The Falcons are right back at it in primetime, facing off against the Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday Night Football in Week 3. Visit Arrowhead Pride for more on next week’s intimidating opponent.

Final Word

Glorious