CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Charlie Woerner didn’t exactly skip off the field, but he sort of skipped off the field. It was the third quarter Sunday evening at Bank of America Stadium and the Atlanta Falcons tight end had just cleared the way for Bijan Robinson on a long gain around the right end.
“I know what you’re talking about, I was kind of flexing and jumping, yeah, I know what you mean,” Woerner said. “I probably hit my tight end coach too hard on the sideline, probably hit (coach Raheem Morris) too hard. They know it’s coming, but you still can get first downs, it feels good.”
And it turned out the Falcons’ run game was just getting started. Atlanta (4-2 overall, 3-0 NFC South) rushed for 127 yards in the second half and 198 yards overall on the way to beating the Carolina Panthers 38-20 and winning its third straight game.
“It’s amazing. That is the best feeling there is,” right tackle Kaleb McGary said. “To feel like you are not just running the ball — every offensive lineman likes running the ball, that’s half our personality — but to feel yourself impacting the game, you feel yourself marching toward that final W. It’s amazing.”
The Falcons held the ball for 18:32 of the second half and outscored Carolina 16-3 after halftime.
Offensive coordinator Zac Robinson “did a good job of committing to the run game,” quarterback Kirk Cousins said. “He asked me at halftime, ‘What do you like?’ I said, ‘I like running the football.’ When you get 4 to 6 yards a pop, it’s hard to try other things. Zac does a good job staying pretty aggressive, but when you’re running the football well, keep running the football.”
Tyler Allgeier led the Falcons with 105 rushing yards — his first 100-yard game since his rookie year — and set the tone for their dominant fourth quarter with an 18-yard run on which he pushed half the Panthers defense down the right sideline.
Tyler Allgeier will not be stopped 😡
📺: #ATLvsCAR on FOX
📱: https://t.co/waVpO909ge pic.twitter.com/SRdaYjqY4e— NFL (@NFL) October 13, 2024
That run marked the beginning of the end for Carolina.
“I guess you can say that,” Allgeier said. “We were all licking our chops. We just kept hitting them and hitting them and hitting them, and it started to slowly wear them down. Finally being able to click and showing our physicality and dominance was good.”
Allgeier’s 2-yard scoring run to cap a nine-play, 84-yard drive with 5:38 remaining gave the Falcons a 35-20 lead and essentially ended the game.
Allgeier “is heavy, he’s a tough tackle,” Morris said. “He can run through people. He is certainly hard to tackle, and he enjoys doing it. Anytime you score a touchdown in this league, it’s big, but there are none bigger than when you can run it down, control the football, eat up clock and then just walk away with a win. Those things are huge for our development, huge for being what we want to be.”
Bijan Robinson had 95 rushing yards and two touchdowns, the first time in his career he has scored multiple rushing touchdowns in a game.
“It feels great,” he said. “To see the straining we are putting in and see the defense start getting tired and look at each other like, ‘What’s going on?’ It gets hard to stop.”
Morris was particularly gratified to see the performance come one week after the Falcons had 477 passing yards in a 36-30 win over Tampa Bay. Their 74 points in back-to-back games marked their highest total since scoring 83 in back-to-back games in December of 2016. Morris, a defensive coordinator for most of his coaching career, would not relish preparing to face his own offense, he said Sunday.
“You have to go look at tape and look at those cutups, and you’re saying, ‘They’re able to do anything they want to do,’ that’s impressive,” Morris said.
.@Bijan5Robinson knows one speed 😤
FOX | NFL+ pic.twitter.com/5vE4GSJRm3
— Atlanta Falcons (@AtlantaFalcons) October 13, 2024
The Falcons have their first three-game winning streak in a season since December of 2019.
“We talk about outrunning the South, to get three straight wins against the South, that is always awesome, and that’s what we want to be about,” Morris said. “Why not just keep winning? Why not us? Somebody’s got to do it.”
It was Atlanta’s largest margin of victory since a 19-point win over Indianapolis in Week 16 last season and its second-largest since Week 12 of 2020 against the Raiders.
“Really didn’t know what to do with myself with time left and being up three scores like that,” said wide receiver Drake London, who had six catches for 74 yards and his fourth touchdown reception of the season. “It was new for me, but hopefully something we can keep on doing.”
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The Falcons’ offensive rushing success rate (64.7 percent) matched their highest total since at least 2000, according to TruMedia, meaning that almost two of every three running plays achieved at least the necessary yardage to keep the team in favorable down-and-distance situations. That’s the fourth-best mark in the NFL this season and the best for a team that ran the ball more than 35 times.
“Everyone was saying this was a trap game, but this team came in here very confident and ready to continue to get better,” Woerner said. “I don’t feel any complacency in this locker room at all. It’s a team that is continuing to get better.”
Cousins, frankly, was one of those people worried about a trap game with his team coming off two emotional last-minute wins in the previous two weeks.
“I had a little bit of tension all week long feeling like there were too many pats on the back from Thursday night,” he said. “I’ve seen it happen before where you just aren’t the same. After the three-and-out to start the game, I was gritting my teeth a little bit, but proud of the way we just kept playing and were able to pull away.”
(Photo of Tyler Allgeier: Jim Dedmon / Imagn Images)
