Falcons – Jets recap: Dismal in the drizzle

The gloom was pervasive, and it wasn’t just the weather. This Atlanta Falcons team had everything to play for—a small chance to climb the ladder in the NFC South, pride, their coaching staff, one another, and even not handing a top ten pick to the Rams in 2026—and they simply weren’t good enough to beat a Jets team that entered the day at 2-9. The list of failures was long, but what’s most remarkable is how many times the Falcons could have simply won this one outright against a Jets team that only had a couple of big plays on the day. They couldn’t do it.

You can, of course, point to the impact of injuries, something that will surely tempt this coaching staff, front office, and perhaps even Arthur Blank himself. But even with that accounted for and the team’s lack of playing time in rain and cold, this was a game where execution and planning doomed the Falcons more than a lack of talent. Kirk Cousins had plenty of zippy balls that were just dropped by Darnell Mooney, David Sills, and Dylan Drummond. The Falcons had enough success with Bijan Robinson, Kyle Pitts, Tyler Allgeier, and others straight up to make a third and short swing pass and 3rd and 8 screen look foolish. Nobody made Mike Hughes start running late and then slip working on a deep ball against AD Mitchell, or Kaden Elliss miss multiple open field tackles, or multiple defenders lose contain and eyes on Tyrod Taylor during his productive scrambles. And Jamal Agnew muffing a fair catch and Zane Gonzalez missing a 50 yard field goal were just mistakes, mistakes, mistakes.

The Falcons lost because, despite the individual acts of brilliance from Bijan Robinson and James Pearce Jr. and Tyler Allgeier and even for a brief shining moment David Sills, they were not very good. That could be their epitaph for the last eight years of Falcons football, frankly, and the sweeping changes sure to be ahead after this game do nothing to inspire fans watching this product at the moment. The Falcons are 4-8, have lost to the Dolphins and now Jets, and have an uncertain future at quarterback and a present defined by questionable coaching and a roster with more holes than pest-gnawed lumber. There’s no reason to think they’ll give us livelier efforts down the stretch, even if the return of Drake London will add something to the offense, and little reason after nearly a decade of losing to assume the decisions ahead will be the right ones.

There are worst places to be than passionately angry about a team you love; there is the lukewarm embrace of outright apathy and deep, cool cynicism, where you can’t be bothered to care what the Falcons do because you know in your heart of hearts they’re going to mess it up. Most of us will be here every week and all throughout the offseason regardless, foolishly holding on to some version of this team that may or may not ever arrive, but it has become increasingly difficult to tell ourselves the Falcons can do this, that, and this and be okay again. It feels like okay is a distant star.

The Falcons still have to play out the final five games of the season, and I’ll hope for signs that better days are indeed ahead. But with the 2025 season well and truly lost and no idea about what’s coming next, we’re just clinging to driftwood and hoping to float to a tropical island. Some dreams are necessary but not particularly wise to have, nonetheless.

On to the full recap.

The Good

• Bijan Robinson was an absolute beast in this one, tearing up yardage and tearing through defenders with aplomb. He took short passes and turned them into 42 yards, reversed direction and picked up first downs, and turned one nice block into multiple chunk gains and a touchdown. The Falcons wisely ran their offense through Bijan for much of the day, and he responded with nearly 200 yards of total offense. This game probably could have been a Falcons win if they had leaned on him a little more heavily, given the final margin, but even superheroes can only do so much.

• Tyler Allgeier didn’t have as many big runs, but he was the red zone hammer we know he can be once again. On second down with the Falcons having just one timeout and having stalled out on first down just a yard out of the end zone, they turned to Allgeier, who ran through multiple defenders for what he made look like an easy score. Between that and the short pass he turned into a 30 yard gain through multiple tackles, Allgeier continued to show why he’s easily the best backup running back in the league.

• Kirk Cousins wasn’t stellar, struggling with pressure early and airmailing a couple of throws, but he was once again good enough once he got rolling to push this offense down the field. After that extremely shaky start, he was sharp most of the day from there on out, consistently hitting his throws, making good decisions, and avoiding turnovers en route to a tidy day through the air that would’ve been a terrific one without multiple drops in the rain. Cousins is doing enough to keep Atlanta afloat, and given the lost nature of the season, that’s all we ought to expect.

• I was baffled early on by how often we were seeing David Sills, but with Atlanta’s receiving options falling and Sills getting more time, I’m starting to get it. Sills has been showing better work as a blocking option and is finally on the same page with his quarterback, which has resulted in two touchdowns in two weeks. The one against the Jets was a great play, too, with Sills juking a defender and powering through on a short pass to score. If he keeps showing this rapport with Cousins and growth, he’ll probably be part of this team’s depth chart again next year, even if his drop on the last drive really hurt.

• Pitts rallied from two rough weeks in a row to turn in a really good day. He reeled in seven of eight targets—the lone miss was a play where a defender made it extremely difficult to catch the ball—and tacked on plenty of yards after the catch en route to 82 yards. The Falcons just don’t have reliable options with Drake London out aside from Pitts and Robinson, and Pitts lived up to that today.

• James Pearce Jr. made it four straight games with a sack. On a day where the pass rush was inconsistent, only he and Leonard Floyd were getting into the backfield regularly and delivering pressure, and Pearce’s big sack on the penultimate Jets drive should have been enough to set the Falcons up for the win. Alas on that last bit, but Pearce is showing the promise and ability the Falcons invested so much in, and should be a great edge rusher for years to come with time and further refinement.

• I thought Divine Deablo and Dee Alford had nice days overall, if not completely blemish-free. Deablo picked up multiple tackles for a loss and was one of the few defenders to consistently keep Hall and Taylor in check, while Alford had a couple of really nice open field tackles and plays in coverage. The Falcons need more from everyone else, but Deablo has been terrific when healthy and Alford has done a marvelous job filling in when he wasn’t expected to have much of a role in 2025.

The Ugly

• Missed opportunities. James Pearce Jr. seemed to have Tyrod Taylor for a 15 yard loss, spinning him around by his jersey, but somehow Taylor got away. LaCale London had a tackle for a loss working against Breece Hall, but he missed him. A.J. Terrell got a little too physical on an underthrown ball AD Mitchell had no shot at, keeping a flickering Jets drive alive. And so on. It didn’t help that the wet conditions led to multiple untimely slips, including Mike Hughes falling down on a Tyrod Taylor third quarter deep shot to the end zone. On a day where the Jets were solid but still recognizably the Jets on offense, with all the drops and errors that entails, the Falcons missing chances to stop drives and make big plays hurt them throughout.

• Nothing like the last sequence from the Falcons with a chance to win the game. A pass to Pitts got broken up—you can argue he had a shot at it, but it wasn’t going to be easy—and then both David Sills and Darnell Mooney simply dropped passes that Cousins put right in their hands. That led to a punt that led to the winning Jets drive, and while it’s hard to be certain, I’m comfortable arguing those drops were the plays that ultimately lost the Falcons the game given the defense’s struggles. It was rough for Sills, who otherwise had a nice day, and very rough for Mooney, who followed up his best game of the year with another stinker.

• The drops were a massive problem on the day. Kirk Cousins had 12 incompletions on the day, and off the top of my head I can think of four drops, all of them costing Atlanta chances at first downs or more. Some of those drops had a degree of difficulty to them, but the Mooney and Sills mishaps on that final drive really did not. Atlanta’s offseason decision to not beef up their receiver depth meaningfully has come back to haunt them over and over again.

• The defense was not the primary reason Atlanta lost, and I got some pushback on X for suggesting that this was one of their worst efforts of the year. But if we can be serious for a moment, the Falcons allowed the Jets to go nearly 50% on third downs, couldn’t take advantage of nine (!) penalties on the Jets and multiple ugly drops, and failed to bottle up Tyrod Taylor, who took eight scrambles for 44 yards and a touchdown. The numbers aren’t jaw-droppingly bad and the two yard Breece Hall touchdown plunge can hardly be blamed on them, meaning they held the Jets to a reasonable total, but the number of missed tackles, bad angles, and mistakes against one of the league’s most lackluster offenses made for a bitterly disappointing day for Atlanta. Perhaps I’m being overly harsh, but the Falcons have been able to count on the defense to overcome mistakes at times this year, and that didn’t happen Sunday despite facing a decidedly below average defense.

• Special teams ultimately cost this team the game. Jamal Agnew’s muffed punt continued an aggravating, uneven season for a player we hoped would be a difference maker. His insistence on trying to field punts inside the 10 yard line rather than letting them bounce makes a certain amount of sense—you don’t want it to bounce to the 1—but is risky on a good day and backfired horribly when Agnew muffed the punt and the Jets recovered it on the two yard line, scoring one play later. Raheem Morris said after the game, rightly, that he should not have even tried to field the kick. Later in the same quarter, he took a punt, returned it a little backwards and sideways, and then slipped. The Falcons are averaging a league-worst average on kickoff returns, as Tori McElhaney noted, and the miserable year from Brooks, Ray-Ray McCloud before his departure, and especially Agnew have been tough to take given that his track record when healthy should’ve made this signing a strength for Atlanta. He won’t be back next year.

• Oh, and more about special teams. The team’s coverage units have been miserable all season, and they did it again versus the Jets, allowing New York’s speedy returner to get it almost to the 15 yard line before Natrone Brooks made an extremely clutch tackle to save a touchdown. There have been far too many of those long returns in 2025, and it reflects poorly on the (relatively) high special teams spending the Falcons did this offseason with minimal results and on specials teams coordinator Marquice Williams, who has had multiple quality years in Atlanta but seem to be incapable of pulling his group of their spiral in 2025.

• It couldn’t last forever, right? The Falcons tried a field goal from 50 yards and Zane Gonzalez missed it, his first miss as a Falcon. That was a much more difficult kick than some of the ones missed by Younghoe Koo and Parker Romo that caused the team to cut both, but it’s a reminder that Gonzalez is not a slam dunk long-term answer at the position for Atlanta, even if he rallied to hit a 52 yard try on the next drive. The Falcons probably need more competition than just Lenny Krieg heading into 2026 to ensure they don’t walk into next year with another uncertain kicking situation.

• Coaching was uninspiring again. The Falcons could not seem to cook up pressure the way they have been, but Jeff Ulbrich still came out looking like the best coordinator on the field. Williams, as I mentioned, continues to preside over a group that is terrible at the little stuff, which I’m sure he would tell you comes back to him. And Robinson put together a better game plan for what was available to him than he has in the past and was undone by errors of execution, but still couldn’t resist overcomplicating things on crucial third downs, when the team kept trying to screen passes and tosses instead of just running it up the gut (which had been working) or using some Feleipe Franks trickery to great effect when he was in the game. I’d say the errors of execution were inarguably a bigger problem, but this staff probably needs some great weeks to ensure they have jobs at the end of this season. Right now, that doesn’t look particularly likely.

• This team is inspiring little more than anger that fades into apathy right now. Despite five years to build this roster, a coaching staff change in between, and plenty of unfulfilled promises, they’re on track to have their worst season since 2020, the debacle that gave us a Terry Fontenot-led front office that was supposed to dig the Falcons back out of their morass. Instead, they’re 4-8 and can’t do enough things well to beat even the worst teams in the NFL, putting them firmly in that camp at the end of the day. Within ten minutes of the end of this game, I had gone from being incredulous (I know, how could I still be?) and angry to just numb to it. With major changes likely on the way, we just don’t have anything else to look forward to besides watching our favorite players making a few heroic plays in losing efforts. If this wasn’t so familiar, it’d be awfully sad.

The Wrapup

Game MVP

It’s Bijan Robinson. As good as Tyler Allgeier, Kyle Pitts, and even Kirk Cousins were, Robinson had nearly 200 yards and a score and was stellar on the ground and through the air.

One Takeaway

I’ve said it so many times this year and then hoped to be able to eat my words, but this is who the Falcons are. They do have talent and they do have potential, but they are too mistake-prone and lackluster when it counts to believe they’ll pull out of their tailspin for very long. I don’t envy the next staff that has to try to pull something bigger and better out of a team that is less than the sum of its parts.

Next Week

A much stiffer challenge looms against the Seattle Seahawks, who will head to Atlanta. If the Falcons follow a pattern they’ll be frisky in this one, but there’s no reason to expect them to be able to triumph in that one.

Final Word

Sodisappointing.