The Numbers Don’t Lie: Falcons Tough Outting in…

There are a lot of words to describe what we just watched from the Atlanta Falcons on Sunday afternoon: lifeless, embarrassing, tumultuous—you get the picture. It wasn’t a fun viewing experience for anyone.

The good news is that the Falcons get to rest for a week and just get back healthy before facing a back half of the schedule that has suddenly become a much more difficult task than it looked when the year began.

Before we get there, let’s list off a few numbers that can help us all understand what we watched on Sunday a bit better.

Here are four numbers to describe the Denver Broncos brutal 38-6 beatdown of the Falcons.

Only two rookies in NFL history have been able to throw for 300 yards while completing 80% or higher of their passes.

2019 – Drew Lock

2024 – Bo Nix

What makes this even more impressive is that when Drew Lock sliced up the Texans’ defense in 2019, his intended air yards per attempt, according to Pro-Football-Reference, was 6.9 yards. Next Gen Stats reported that Bo Nix’s average depth of target was a “career-low 3.6 air yards per attempt”, almost half of Lock’s.

Even though everyone will remember this one insane throw from the former Oregon Duck, Nix and noted Falcons villain Sean Payton literally did more with less as they meticulously diced up this Atlanta Falcons defense.

This season, to nobody’s surprise, Kirk Cousins has been at his best when the pocket is clean and he is able to scan the field. According to Next Gen Stats, 175 of Cousins’ 187 passing yards (93.6%) came from a clean pocket, Cousins was 16-of-21 (76.2%) on these throws.

When pressured, Cousins was 2-of-6 for -2 yards, an interception and three sacks. NGS pointed out that Cousins’ -1.84 EPA per dropback, while pressured, is the lowest mark by any quarterback this season.

Cousins was simply a different quarterback under pressure than he was when the pocket was clean. A pocket quarterback having more struggles than one with more escapability when it gets a bit muddy is expected. Losing almost two points per pressure allowed isn’t acceptable in the NFL, as there’s no sustainable way to succeed like that.

On Nix’s 35 dropbacks, the Atlanta Falcons were only able to get pressure on five. The lone sack they were able to get came from Matthew Judon pushing right tackle Mike McGlinchey into Nix. That’s it. That’s the only sack this team was able to muster.

Coming in, the Broncos were one of the more formidable pass-protecting units, so there wasn’t much expectation for this anemic Falcons pass rush, but that doesn’t make it any less embarrassing.

The Falcons currently have 10 sacks in 11 games, if they continue on this track, they are projected for 16 sacks for the season, the lowest mark this league has seen since the 2018 Oakland Raiders and tied for the 11th-worst mark by a team in NFL history since the sack became an official stat in 1982.

Nine years. 146 games. 5103 attempts. Over 39,000 yards.

That’s how long it took for Cousins to have back-to-back games without a passing touchdown. It took three teams, 269 touchdowns and 100 interceptions, but the 36-year-old Cousins knows what it’s like to not find the end zone in back-to-back games.

Now he, Zac Robinson and the rest of this Falcons offense have an extra week to think on and understand where this passing attack has potentially gone south as they look to make a push to the playoffs.