Falcons enter their bye with a lot to figure out, starting with quarterback (2024)

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The Atlanta Falcons have plenty of questions after dropping their third straight game (and fourth in five outings) Sunday in Arizona. None is more important than who the starting quarterback will be down the stretch.

Atlanta (4-6) got to look at both of its options Sunday during a 25-23 loss to the Arizona Cardinals (2-8) because starter Taylor Heinicke left the game in the second half because of a hamstring injury and was replaced by Desmond Ridder. That doesn’t mean the Falcons got much clarity.

Read more here.

Minkah Fitzpatrick has been — for lack of a better term — quite the pain in the ass of Teryl Austin over the past couple of weeks. With Fitzpatrick out with a strained hamstring, he’s been in the Pittsburgh Steelers defensive coordinator’s hip pocket ever since, as he waits for his return to the field.

Fitzpatrick is that kind of guy. Lucky for the Steelers.

“He’s always around,” Austin said with a chuckle late last week.

And with the Steelers leading by four with three seconds left and the Green Bay Packers at Pittsburgh’s 16-yard line on Sunday afternoon at Acrisure Stadium, Fitzpatrick lost his mind. He wasn’t shy about letting the nearby Austin hear about it.

Fitzpatrick didn’t like the Steelers’ planned defensive play call, and he did a little more than suggest his idea to Austin. The Pro Bowl safety was so adamant that the Steelers called timeout to talk it over.

“Yeah, I had an idea,” Fitzpatrick said after the game with a sheepish smile. “So me and (defensive backs coach) Grady (Brown) talked (Austin) into changing it.”

Instead of playing man coverage at the line of scrimmage and having a shell of players with their feet just inside the goal line, Austin switched the call to have seven defenders lined up at the goal line like a picket fence. It resulted in a game-winning interception by Damonte Kazee, as the Steelers once again found a way to win a close game.

Read more here.

There was mayhem in the AFC North on Sunday as the Houston Texans upset the Cincinnati Bengals behind rookie phenom C.J. Stroud and the Cleveland Browns rallied to knock off the first-place Baltimore Ravens, with both favorites losing at home. The Pittsburgh Steelers held off the visiting Green Bay Packers despite getting outgained, but that’s nothing new for the Steelers.

Meanwhile, the San Francisco 49ers flexed some muscle against the Jacksonville Jaguars and a folk-hero story continued in Minnesota.

The Athletic NFL writers Mike Jones, Ted Nguyen and Dan Pompei share their thoughts on the top headlines from Sunday.

Who had the best win in Week 10...the Texans, Browns or Lions? There may not be a definitive answer, and that's part of what made this such a great Sunday in the NFL.

Robert Mays and Nate Tice are here to break it down on this episode of The Athletic Football Show.

Watch the live stream here.

Steve Wilks’ sideline relocation was going to be a bonanza for the Fox television cameras no matter what happened Sunday.

If the San Francisco 49ers’ defense struggled there would be all sorts of forlorn shots of the defensive coordinator with perhaps one — if Fox got lucky with the composition — of a stone-faced Kyle Shanahan looming in the background.

Instead, viewers got a stream of increasingly triumphant Wilks images during the 49ers’ 34-3 rout of the Jacksonville Jaguars. There was Wilks after Nick Bosa ripped the ball from Trevor Lawrence in the second quarter. There he was following a Fred Warner interception in the fourth quarter. There he was at game’s end walking up to individual 49ers defenders and shaking their hands.

Which is to say, there was no bigger winner than the embattled Wilks on Sunday.

Read more here.

The first significant adjustment came on the initial snap of the San Francisco 49ers’ 34-3 shellacking of the Jacksonville Jaguars.

The 49ers trotted five defensive linemen onto the field. They’d used that formation before, but only sparingly. Their intentions were clear: The Jaguars were to be dissuaded from running the football against a 49ers’ run defense that had — shockingly — been performing as one of the league’s worst units over its first eight games of the season.

If the Jaguars had a run play called, quarterback Trevor Lawrence checked out of it. His throw, defended by 49ers linebacker Fred Warner, fell incomplete to the right.

“We wanted to just give him different looks from the jump, just to try to make his life hard, not just be stagnant back there,” Warner said. “The five-man look was cool, give him something to think about the whole rest of the game. Set the tone."

Warner noted the Jaguars didn’t even attempt to run until their second drive — so consider the tone set. The Jaguars went three-and-out, marking a radical difference from the Cincinnati Bengals’ opening touchdown drive against the 49ers two weeks ago. And quarterback Brock Purdy, who’d deliver a touchdown pass to receiver Brandon Aiyuk four plays after the Jaguars punted, immediately noticed the shift in energy.

Read more here.

In a four-game span from weeks 10 to 13 last season, Christian Watson caught 15 passes for 313 yards and seven touchdowns.

After a rookie training camp and first half of the season tainted by injuries, the 2022 second-round pick for whom the Packers traded up had announced himself to both Green Bay and the NFL as the Packers’ No. 1 wide receiver and a legitimate big-play threat.

That Watson, now halfway through his second season, has vanished.

In six games played this season after missing the first three with a hamstring injury, Watson has 14 catches for 236 yards and one touchdown. According to ESPN Stats & Info, half of quarterback Jordan Love’s 10 interceptions through nine games have come targeting Watson, including two in the fourth quarter of Sunday’s 23-19 loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Watson is not entirely to blame, but the Love-Watson connection that’s supposed to power Green Bay’s passing game is virtually nonexistent. That’s part of the reason why the Packers have failed to score more than 20 points in seven consecutive games, the primary reason they’ve slumped to 3-6 just past the midway point of this season.

Read more here.

Kyler Murray made his first start since tearing his ACL in Week 14 of the 2022 season and led the Arizona Cardinals to a 25-23 victory against the Atlanta Falcons on Sunday. Here’s what you need to know:

• After the Falcons took the lead on a 9-yard Desmond Ridder touchdown run, Murray led the Cardinals on an 11-play, 70-yard drive that ended with a 23-yard Matt Prater field goal in the final seconds.
• Murray picked up a key first down with a 13-yard scramble and completed a 33-yard pass to tight end Trey McBride to set up Prater’s game-winning kick.
• Murray finished 19-of-32 for 249 yards passing with one interception as well as 33 yards and a touchdown rushing.
• Falcons quarterback Taylor Heinicke suffered a hamstring injury and was removed from the game after being tackled by Zaven Collins on an 8-yard run with 13:58 remaining in the fourth quarter.

Read more here.

A few more facts about the Cowboys' 641 total yards in Sunday's win over the Giants:

• 641 yards are the seventh most in a game since the 1970 merger. Miami put up 726 earlier this year against Denver.
• It's just the seventh time since 1970 a team has recorded 640 yards of offense.

The Cowboys improved their league-best home winning streak to 12 games on Sunday. Cowboys QB Dak Prescott didn’t even play in the fourth quarter as Dallas cruised to the easy 49-17 victory. The Cowboys have now outscored their opponents 160-50 in their four home games this season.

Dak Prescott continued his strong play since the 49ers game. Over the last 4 games, he is 101 of 140 passing for 1,354 yards, 12 TDs, 2 INTs and a 125.1 passer rating. He also has 19 rushes for 90 yards and 2 TDs. CeeDee Lamb has also been outstanding since the 49ers game. He had his fourth consecutive 100-yard receiving game, finishing with 151 yards on 11 receptions. He also scored two touchdowns. Dallas, a 17.5-point favorite, did what it was supposed to against the Giants, improving to 6-3. The most impressive stat was probably total yards: Cowboys 641, Giants 172.

This was about as exact to script of a game the Cowboys have had this season. A score like 49-17 seems outrageous, and it is, but so was the spread of Dallas being favored by 17 coming into the game.

There are certainly elements of the game that are eye-popping and impressive, headlined by Dallas racking up 641 total yards, 10th most in NFL history and second most in franchise history, only trailing a game in 1966 against the Eagles in which they had 652. Ceedee Lamb also became the first player in NFL history with three straight games of 10-plus catches and 150-plus yards. The defense did to Tommy DeVito what they should have done. The Cowboys simply took care of business, nothing more and nothing less.

The defense largely held up against Seattle’s potent attack until the mistakes became overwhelming.

Kenneth Walker’s 64-yard catch-and-run-touchdown in the third quarter included a missed tackle by safety Percy Butler after Danny Johnson’s slip gave the Seahawks’ running back an opening. Unacceptable, especially after allowing a 64-yard run by a New England RB last week, and yet not the worst drive after halftime.

Seattle scored two field goals and a touchdown on the final three possessions. The TD came on the second possession with Washington hurting its cause with a pass interference penalty immediately before being whistle-blower for 12 men on the field. CB Benjamin St-Juste, called for the PI, was in coverage on the Lockett touchdown.

D.K. Metcalf, a looming threat all game, had receptions of 17 and 27 on the final drive.

Washington’s young backfield – Sam Howell plus running backs Brian Robinson and Antonio Gibson – were the focal points for the offense. That their main efforts came in the passing game is the twist.

Robinson twice took a short pass for a massive gain en route to setting career-highs in receiving yards (119), yards from scrimmage (157) and receptions (six). Gibson, the more obvious receiving threat, had five receptions including the tying touchdown with 8:06.

Howell’s growth continued despite the loss. He has at 312 passing yards in Washington’s last three games with eight TDP and two interceptions in that span.

Seahawks QB Geno Smith has been under heavy scrutiny in recent weeks for not taking care of the ball and playing below the standard he established as a Pro Bowler last season. This type of game will buy him some benefit of the doubt for at least another week.

On Seattle’s first go-ahead scoring drive in the fourth quarter against the Commanders, Smith completed all five of his passes for 50 yards, including a 5-yard touchdown to receiver Tyler Lockett. On the game-winning drive, Smith completed 4-of-5 passes for 50 yards to set up Jason Myers’ field goal as time expired. Smith on Sunday was 31-of-47 for 369 yards, two scores – and no turnovers.

The Giants were blown out in embarrassing fashion in their first meeting with the Cowboys. Somehow things got worse in their second meeting.

In total, the Cowboys put up 89 points on the Giants this season. Besides things not going according to plan for New York in the second meeting, frustrations visibly boiled over on the sideline. FOX reported there were lengthy discussions between running back Saquon Barkley and head coach Brian Daboll and then there was a long talk between Daboll and defensive coordinator Wink Martindale that started before halftime and extended out of the break. Then in the second half, wide receivers Darius Slayton and Sterling Shepard got into it.

With a 2-8 record, frustrations are understandable but the boiling over will need to be monitored on how the locker room holds up over the remaining seven games.

It shouldn’t be a surprise that the Cowboys went out of their way to get veteran WR Brandin Cooks going in the first half Sunday. Cooks entered the game averaging only 23.5 receiving yards per game. In the first half against the Giants: 7 targets, 7 catches, 104 yards and a touchdown.

Facing one of the NFL’s worst teams, it made sense to get some extra opportunities for the team’s No. 2 wide receiver. Before Sunday, Cooks’ season-high was 49 receiving yards against the Rams in Week 8. Cowboys coach Mike McCarthy grew frustrated with reporters last Monday when asked about the lack of opportunities for Cooks. The veteran WR insisted that he wasn’t bothered. “I’m not going down that path,” Cooks said. “Earlier in my career, I went down that path. It’s not going to do any good for yourself mentally and just the guys that are around you. I trust Coach. I trust Dak (Prescott). I trust the offense. It’s going to come. And when it comes, you’re gonna know.”

Cooks finished Sunday's game with 9 catches for 173 yards and a touchdown.

The Falcons offense had scored 48 points in six quarters with Heinicke on the field coming into the game, but he only had 55 passing yards when he exited the game. Head coach Arthur Smith had already indicated he was considering giving Ridder another shot at the starting job this season, so this gives him a chance to go back to the player he had hoped would be the quarterback of the future in Atlanta.

Ridder started the first eight games of the year for Atlanta but was benched midway through the Week 8 game against Tennessee.

Cowboys had a classic play-with-your-food start to the game, leaving plenty of plays and points on the field. At no point was that any threat to the Cowboys' overall chances, or even to make the game interesting, but a few drops from the tight ends and a Dak Prescott interception kept things close on the scoreboard for a while.

Eventually, the offense started to get things going and finishing drives. Brandin Cooks was heavily featured, CeeDee Lamb continued his dominance and Rico Dowdle got in the mix as well. The defense is doing exactly what one would expect this Cowboys defense to do to a Tommy DeVito-led offense. It all adds up to the game going according to script, the Cowboys leading 28-0 at the half and being on pace to win 56-0, which would eclipse their 40-0 beatdown of the Giants in Week 1 in New York.

The Cowboys had struggled to get WR Brandin Cooks involved in the offense so far this season but not today. At the 2-minute warning of the first half today, Cooks has seven receptions (on seven targets) for 104 yards (both season highs) and a touchdown.

He entered the game with 17 receptions for 165 yards and two TDs in seven games.

Big cheer just now at AT&T Stadium, but it wasn't for the Cowboys.

It was for a couple of World Series champion Texas Rangers -- Jose LeClerc and Adolis Garcia -- wearing Cowboys jerseys while watching Dallas beat up on the Giants.