Is it time to take the Falcons seriously? It certainly looks like that now that Atlanta has its starting quarterback in the lineup. Michael Penix Jr. looked as good as anyone expected in his first game back from a major knee injury, and Bijan Robinson looked unstoppable on the ground in a surprisingly uncompetitive 35-14 win over the Packers in Green Bay. Meanwhile, the Packers look like a broken team with no clear fixes as they fall to 1-2. Here are my takeaways: Is it fair? Probably not. LaFleur is undoubtedly a good coach who revived Aaron Rodgers\u2019 career and developed Jordan Love into a top-10 quarterback. He\u2019s had Green Bay\u2019s offense near the top of the league\u2019s statistical charts throughout his coaching tenure. But you don\u2019t get to hang banners for expected points added (EPA) or DVOA, and it feels like the Packers are further away from winning a Super Bowl than they\u2019ve ever been in LaFleur\u2019s eight years on the job, which has produced just three playoff wins. A 1-2 start isn\u2019t impossible to climb out of, and Green Bay will eventually get Micah Parsons back; but this team\u2019s problems may not be solvable. The offensive line is certainly beyond saving, and as we saw on Thursday night, it\u2019s holding back the entire offense. The Packers came into the game with the league\u2019s worst rushing game and that won\u2019t change after a 17-yard performance. Pass protection has been an even bigger issue. Love’s been under fire all season, and the Falcons pressured him on 42% of his dropbacks with an average time-to-pressure of 2.28 seconds, per Next Gen Stats. The defense had been better than expected coming into the game \u2014 and former first-round pick Lukas Van Ness has been a bright spot \u2014 but Thursday\u2019s performance will not inspire confidence. After an early interception of Michael Penix, Atlanta marched up and down the field with little resistance. This is a bad football team right now. If LaFleur can\u2019t turn this season around, questions about his job security will persist. Whether or not the Packers actually move on from him is another matter. LaFleur just signed a contract extension in the offseason, and this is the one NFL team that doesn\u2019t have a billionaire owner who can eat that kind of money. Even if the team wants to move on from the 46-year-old coach, it may not be able to afford it. With all due respect to Jahmyr Gibbs, there\u2019s no better viewing experience than watching Robinson glide through defenses. He put on a show Thursday night in Green Bay, racking up 194 yards and two touchdowns on 29 carries. It was Robinson\u2019s 11th game with at least 150 yards from scrimmage since he entered the league. Only Derrick Henry has more since 2022. The case for Robinson as the NFL\u2019s best running back is strong. He has an OK offensive line and a passing game that doesn\u2019t give him much protection, but the 2024 first-round pick keeps producing big plays for an offense that desperately needs them. On Thursday night, he forced eight missed tackles and produced 175 rushing yards\u00a0after\u00a0contact, per Next Gen Stats. Few running backs can carry an offense on their own, but Robinson is definitely on that short list. If Atlanta\u2019s passing game can just be competent, this team should score enough points to stay in the NFC South race all season. The Falcons will be back in primetime the next two weeks. That looked like an error in judgment by the schedule makers coming into Thursday, but the Bijan Robinson Show is can\u2019t-miss television. We had to wait until the third week of the regular season, but the Falcons quarterback competition has finally been settled. We\u2019ll have to wait for confirmation from Kevin Stefanski, but Michael Penix Jr. should be the unquestioned starter after his performance in Green Bay. Penix shook off a shaky start that included an ugly interception, but was lights out the rest of the night, averaging over 10 yards per attempt. While he got rid of the ball in a hurry, it didn\u2019t prevent him from pushing it downfield. He unlocked Drake London, who was off to a sleepy start to the season but broke out with a 194-yard performance, including two big gains of 68 and 40. The Falcons’ passing game was always going to improve with a legitimate starter replacing Cooper Rush, but few expected it to look\u00a0this good in Penix\u2019s first game since tearing his ACL last season. The third-year pro should get even better as he gets reacclimated to playing against live defenses after missing all of the preseason and most of training camp. Penix doesn\u2019t have to be a world beater to thrive in this talented offense. Robinson will do most of the heavy lifting, and guys like London and Kyle Pitts will regularly turn routine throws into big plays. It was easy to forget how stacked this offense is when Rush was out there, but the sky\u2019s the limit for the unit if Penix can replicate this performance. We\u2019ll find out if the Falcons can compete for the division next week when they travel to New Orleans. That\u2019s followed by a tough stretch of games against true NFC contenders, so Atlanta may need to win it to make a real playoff push. Green Bay goes on the road to take on a desperate Buccaneers team before their first matchup with the rival Bears. If the Packers fall to 1-3 going into that Chicago game, the chatter about LaFleur\u2019s job will only get louder.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Is it time to take the Falcons seriously? It certainly looks like that now that Atlanta has its starting quarterback in the lineup. Michael Penix Jr. looked as good as anyone expected in his first game back from a major knee injury, and Bijan Robinson looked unstoppable on the ground in a surprisingly uncompetitive 35-14<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/onlinebettingnewyork.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33753"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/onlinebettingnewyork.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/onlinebettingnewyork.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onlinebettingnewyork.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33753"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/onlinebettingnewyork.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33753\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/onlinebettingnewyork.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onlinebettingnewyork.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onlinebettingnewyork.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}