“You Will Preview Them & You Will LIKE IT!” – An Annual Atlanta Falcons Preview

Hi everyone,

It’s me, your old pal Beerguy. I’m back covering my [DFO] mandatory preview / favourite team, the Atlanta Falcons

Now, I don’t know much about sports, but over the years I’ve picked up a few things. I do know this: the Atlanta Falcons are a professional football team located in Atlanta, Georgia. Their mascot is a bird of prey, which is fitting, because for the last few years, their fans have felt like they’re being slowly picked apart by a vulture in a stadium that looks like a giant, retractable metal sphincter.

You look at the head coaching situation down there in Atlanta, and it’s fascinating. They had Raheem Morris running the show, and then they decide to bring in Kevin Stefanski. Now, Stefanski comes over from Cleveland. That’s right, Cleveland—a city so historically renowned for football excellence that their most famous play of the last twenty years is Myles Garrett hitting Mason Rudolph in the face with his own helmet. But Atlanta said, “Give us the guy who survived that place.”

But at least he doesn’t have to decide between rapist & nepo-baby quarterbacks anymore…

Offence:

The Falcons QB room is really more of a psychiatric ward. Last year, they paid Kirk Cousins enough money to buy a small European nation, only to immediately draft Michael Penix Jr. in the first round. And now, they’ve dropped Kirk & added Tua Tagovailoa, so you just KNOW the coaching staff was thinking, “hey, both guys throw with their left hand; we don’t even have to change the playbook!”.

You’ve got Penix, who has had more surgeries than a Real Housewife, and Tua, who is one loud stadium noise away from seeing into the fourth dimension. So, their grand strategic plan at the quarterback position is to collect as many left-handed gentlemen with tragic medical histories as humanly possible while driving every Catholic nun within 100 miles insane because they’re using the devil’s hand. Not since Black Sabbath recorded “Black Sabbath” for Black Sabbath has a plan sounded this convincing on paper. I guess that’s why they’ve chosen Tua, based on the depth chart;

although, they are currently carrying FOUR QBs just in case they break one or two by Week 5.

Steve Earle break:

On offense, they’ve got Bijan Robinson at running back. Now, Bijan is fantastic. He runs the football like he’s trying to escape a burning building. The only problem is, every time he broke a thirty-yard run last year, you’d look at the sideline and the coaching staff would be staring at a clipboard like it’s written in Nordic runes, trying to figure out how to get the ball to a third-string tight end on 3rd & 1. God forbid they actually make things easy for him. The man just got a massive extension – he is a generational talent, a human highlight reel that actually lives up to the legacy of the original ATL holder of that name, Dominique Wilkins.

Fortunately, they’ve decided to pair him with another Robinson – Brian Robinson Jr.! Because the Falcons front office saw the backfield and said, “You know what this offense needs? MORE ROBINSONS! Let’s just line up eleven guys named Robinson and see if the defense gets confused!” Plus, it was getting too hard for old Arthur Blank to spell “Tyler Allgeier” so they let him go to Arizona to be a starter, until he loses it in Week 9 to a wheelchair-bound James Conner.

Beyond Drake London at wide receiver, there’s not much. He is plenty, though. He catches everything thrown near him, which is a miracle, because half the time last year the ball was delivered with the velocity and trajectory of a thrown grapefruit. This year it’ll all be coming from the left. And Kyle Pitts is still there! Remember Kyle Pitts? People talked about him in the draft like he was a mythical creature—half man, half stallion, destined to revolutionize the sport. Four years later, he’s mostly used as a distraction while the punter gets warmed up. Just remember what I said last year – he’s fantasy poison.

As for the O-line, right tackle Kaleb McGary decided to suddenly retire in April! He took one look at this upcoming season, threw his hands in the air, and said, “NOPE!” So who do they sign to protect the quarterback’s blindside – which is on the right side now because everyone is LEFT-HANDED? Jawaan Taylor – a man who got so many false start penalties in Kansas City they were willing to eat his cap hit ($27 million) just to be done with him. That’s why the Falcons got him for just $5 million, and they’re hoping his tendency for head starts keeps their glass quarterback menagerie unbroken.

Defence:

Let’s turn our eyes to the defense, shall we?!

They retained defensive coordinator & former hobo Jeff Ulbrich after they set a franchise record with 57 sacks last year. That’s actual, tangible progress! So, what happens next? James Pearce Jr., their prized first-round pass rusher, gets slapped with an eight-game suspension before the season even starts! For stalking his ex-girlfriend,

who is a WNBA player. (See, MAGA – they’re not all lesbians!) Because of this, they had to go out and sign half the free-agent linebacker market – Samson Ebukam, Azeez Ojulari, Christian Harris – just to ensure they have enough warm bodies to stand on the field without hyperventilating.

Elsewhere on defense, they’ve got Jessie Bates III back at safety. Jessie Bates is a guy who spends three hours every Sunday running as fast as he can to cover for eleven other guys who seem to have just met in the parking lot twenty minutes before kickoff. He’s an All-Pro player, which in Atlanta means he gets to watch the opposing team score from a slightly better vantage point than the fans. Grady Jarrett did this for a long time up front and then fucked off to Chicago the first chance he got. So, given this is the last year of his four-year contract & he hasn’t sniffed the playoffs once since arriving from Cincinnati, expect Bates to do the same thing once the season ends.

They also went out and drafted Avieon Terrell, whose brother A.J. is already on the team. That’s nice. It’s a family reunion in the defensive backfield. If a receiver gets open, their mother is going to call the sideline and ground them both. It’s not as heartwarming as when the Seahawks had two Griffins with a combined three hands between them,

but hopefully we’ll get an Oasis-style blowup from them once this team’s record falls below the equator.

As for the kicking game, longtime mainstay Younghoe Koo got cut after the first game last year, and they then played kicker roulette for the rest of the season. Now they have 41-year-old Nick Folk kicking field goals – a man who was kicking footballs when the internet was still delivered on compact discs. His walkout song should be the AOL dial-up scree. Some delusional souls even think that despite his age he’s a “massive upgrade”, because Falcons kickers have 19 missed kicks across two seasons. Folk, by comparison, has missed just 16 kicks total since 2019.

And for what?! All of this chaos just to play in the NFC South?! The single most bizarre, upside-down division in professional sports! A division where a 7-10 record isn’t just a failure, it’s a contender for the division crown. It’s not so much a race to the top as it is four guys trying to crawl out of the Shawshank sewer without getting any gunk on their shoes.

Prediction:

It’s been eight straight losing seasons, and now there’s a new front office, a left-handed quarterback game of Russian roulette, and a fan base that has been pushed to the absolute brink of sanity. Will they win eight games? Will they win ten? IT DOESN’T MATTER! Standard football wisdom dictates that no matter what happens, they will find a way to lose a game in the final two minutes that both involves a Kyle Pitts fuckup and violating the known laws of physics. (I’m calling a fumbled right-handed lateral.) But hey… at least the hot dogs in the stadium are still two dollars.