FLOWERY BRANCH, Ga. — An important if unpleasant part of NFL meetings after a loss is what Atlanta Falcons coach Raheem Morris calls “the tell-the-truth moments.” The truth is the Falcons offense — despite heavy investments in draft capital and actual capital — was bad in the season opener.
“We played winning football in two phases of the game, and we didn’t play winning football in the offensive phase of the game,” Morris said Monday, one day after his team fell 18-10 to the Pittsburgh Steelers. “That’s the truth of the matter. We have to find a way to play better.”
The Falcons gained only 226 yards, the fourth fewest in Week 1. The longest of their final six drives went 13 yards. And they turned the ball over three times.
This is not what the Falcons expected after spending three straight top-10 draft picks on offensive skill-position players, signing quarterback Kirk Cousins to a free-agent deal that guarantees him $90 million over the next two seasons and hiring offensive coordinator Zac Robinson from the Los Angeles Rams coaching staff.
Cousins’ performance drew most of the attention … and criticism. The 13-year veteran finished 16-for-26 passing for 155 yards, one touchdown and two interceptions.
“The assessment is easy for him (Sunday). It wasn’t good enough,” Morris said. “We threw two interceptions. We have to make better decisions in the passing game all the way around. We can’t turn the ball over. It just wasn’t good enough. We’re going to be really clear about that. Whether it’s wins or losses, we always make those assessments to our quarterback and everyone else. It’s just that the quarterback gets the most attention.”
Especially when it’s Cousins, who was the NFL’s most high-profile free agent this offseason and is being counted on to get the best out of wide receiver Drake London, running back Bijan Robinson and tight end Kyle Pitts. Cousins played Sunday for the first time since rupturing his Achilles tendon in Week 8 last season when he was with the Minnesota Vikings, but Morris said he doesn’t believe Cousins’ performance was health-related.
“I feel like Kirk is healthy,” the coach said. “He’s been healthy since he’s been here. When we came back for training camp, he was full go.”
Interesting note from @ESPNStatsInfo:
The Falcons were in pistol or shotgun on 96% of their snaps today.
Of the 22 snaps out of shotgun, the Falcons had 0 designed runs.
Of the 26 snaps out of pistol, the Falcons ran the ball on 81% of their plays.
— Field Yates (@FieldYates) September 9, 2024
Cousins did not play in any preseason games, but he was a full participant in all of the Falcons’ preseason practices and showed as much mobility during those sessions as he has during the first 12 years of his career.
He showed almost no mobility against the Steelers as if by design. Forty-eight of Atlanta’s 50 snaps came out of either the pistol or shotgun formation, which don’t require the quarterback to take a drop back into the pocket. The Falcons also didn’t have a single snap of play-action passing. Only one NFL team had a zero play-action game in all of the 2023 season.
The game plan was not health-related, Morris said, but it’s a fair assumption to make considering that it’s a different approach than Cousins has had success with in the past. In 2022, when the quarterback led the Vikings to 13 regular-season wins and threw for 4,547 yards, Minnesota was fourth in the league in the use of play-action (19.3 percent of snaps) and 29th in the league in snaps out of shotgun (53.1 percent).
The Falcons tried a different approach.
“We have been doing the same thing since he’s been here. That’s how we planned on playing,” Morris said. “Everything is going to be situational to the game plan for who you are playing.”
Zac Robinson was calling plays for the first time in a regular-season game, a task that was made much harder by the Steelers defense and how often penalties and miscues got the Atlanta offense into bad positions, Morris said.
“It’s extremely difficult for a play caller when you shoot yourself in the foot with penalties and you find yourself off track,” Morris said. “Really it’s less about the play calling and more about the defense of the Pittsburgh Steelers. I’ve played a bunch of games against those guys and they all eerily feel the same. They just stay right into it until the end, and we have to do a better job of finding a way to win those games.”
Cousins, who was not in the locker room during media availability Monday, was “calm and collected through the whole game,” backup quarterback Michael Penix Jr. said.
“We had a lot of things in our game plan that we wish we could have executed a little better, but it’s never as good as you think, never as bad as you think once you go back and look at it,” Penix said. “We left a lot of things out there, but we did execute a lot of things as well, more than a lot of people outside our facility could see.”
All the offensive blame can’t be placed on the quarterback, Morris emphasized. The offensive line gave up seven quarterback hits, and the Falcons rushed for only 89 yards.
“The game exposed some things inside for us and made it a tough day inside and it also activated those (pass rushers) outside,” Morris said. “I don’t want to take away any credit from what (the Steelers) are able to do, but our plan, we have to go out there and execute it better. You can’t just say it’s one thing when they’re able to stop you in the second half the way they were. It’s going to be all-encompassing.”
Pittsburgh edge rusher T.J. Watt had three quarterback hits, a sack and a fumble recovery by himself and menaced Cousins throughout the game despite what Morris said was a plan to help Falcons right tackle Kaleb McGary handle him off the edge.
“T.J. is a great player in this league, and he gets tendencies on everybody,” Morris said. “If you go against a guy that good, they are going to find a way to wreck the game and we were trying to find a way to limit that as much as possible. You have to do everything imaginable to get him off his game. We were able to do that in the first drive of the game. We were able to do it in the two-minute drive. Then he kind of got ahold of us.”
The Falcons get an extra day to fix their offensive issues this week. Their next game comes Monday night in Philadelphia against the Eagles.
“It’s always a little somber when you lose, but you have to bounce back,” Morris said. “Everything is a learning experience. This is a great learning experience for us. This team is resilient. They’re a pretty tough group.”
(Top photo: Kevin C. Cox / Getty Images)
