Week 1 Recap

..It seems I have been humbled and my hope within this team has faltered. Week 1 against the Buccaneers was extremely winnable, even without Darnell Mooney. Despite this, we’re the Atlanta Falcons, so we still lost. The Falcons were good, middling, and downright ugly (all at the same time) during week 1, so let’s dive into it.

THE GOOD

Michael Penix Jr. is amazing. He played fantastically with quick reaction time to avoid multiple sacks, and had multiple rush attempts with positive yardage AND one rushing touchdown (which deserves more credit than it’s being given). Penix also threw for 298 yards (fourth most in Week 1), and threw one touchdown to Bijan Robinson. Even without his starting right tackle, Penix looked comfortable in the pocket, which is nice to hear considering our last quarterback moved like a stone once the ball was snapped. The only problem with Penix this week was the lack of deep balls, though that fault can’t be attributed to him. (We’ll talk about who is at fault later.)

Bijan Robinson played well, he’s a top 3 running back, we all know this. On Sunday he recorded 100 receiving yards, which was a first for his career. You may think that since he’s a running back, he would’ve had more rushing yards than receiving yards.. But you’d think wrong. Robinson only had 24 rushing yards with 12 carries throughout the entire game. This was extremely underwhelming, but it isn’t entirely his fault. With a combination of the Falcons OL being fractured and the Bucs DL assaulting ATL, it was extremely difficult for Bijan to do much rushing wise on Sunday. Sparing injuries, there’s a large chance that Robinson will revive ATL’s running game, as they’ll be going against weaker defensive lines in the next few weeks.

Kyle Pitts was an oddly good receiver on Sunday, recording 7 receptions for 59 yards. He showed glimpses of potential in this game, but there’s nothing really notable to say about him. He played a good ball game, and that’s good enough for Pitts. 

I’ll say it – our defense played really well. I was genuinely surprised at how they looked quick on the field, and they delivered a LOT of pressure on Tampa. All of our rookies on the defense looked great, with a special shoutout going to Xavier Watts and Billy Bowman Jr. Watts was great in coverage and was mere INCHES away from having two interceptions in his NFL debut. Bowman Jr. also recorded half a sack, and was excellent on coverage. Divine Deablo showed why we signed him in the offseason, as he was all over the field delivering pressure to TB. The only problem I had with this defense was the fact that they gave Mayfield the opportunity to rush for multiple first downs and allowed him to throw 2 TD’s to a rookie. I guess I can’t complain much though, as this was only the third time in ten games in which they held TB to under 25 points. I’m excited for what’s to come.

THE ‘MID’DLING

The only thing that I can complain about here are our WRs. Drake London had 8 receptions for 55 yards, Ray-Ray McCloud had 3 receptions for 52 yards, and Casey Washington had 3 receptions for 33 yards. This should go without saying, but these are not good stats. London dropped more than a few balls, and the other two also had a few drops. London AND Casey both left this game in the middle of the 4th quarter due to injuries (London had a shoulder sprain & Washington got concussed). I’m a little worried about our WR depth, which is something that shouldn’t have to be said with this team. London and Darnell Mooney are practicing as of today (9/10/25) though, so there’s a more than decent chance that they’ll be good to go on Sunday against the Vikings.

THE DOWNRIGHT UGLY

Let’s get the obvious part out of the way. Younghoe Koo needs to leave Atlanta. He doesn’t perform like how he used to, and he’s going to cost us even more games if he keeps playing like this. He missed the game-time field goal in the last 2 seconds of the game last week. Koo is the reason why we lost, and  he should be benched as soon as possible. 

The coaching was terrible this game. There were zero big plays (spare Bijan’s TD in the first quarter) and they kept trying to run the ball when it very clearly was not working? Penix didn’t make any mistakes. Bijan, when given the chance, didn’t make any mistakes either. This offense just did not look as explosive as it should have been last week and the playcalling needs to be thoroughly rethunk against MIN next week.

All in all, if Penix can keep playing like how he did last week, we have a future MVP. Everything else around him just needs to fall into place. If ATL can win against the Vikings next week, they’ll be making a big statement. If we have all of our weapons, then I believe that we can win the game. Only time will tell though… #RiseUp