Falcons vs. Jets odds: Atlanta is still a favorite on the road after three miserable weeks

The Atlanta Falcons, once 3-0, are now a .500 football team. They’ve lost to three out of the four AFC East opponents they’ll face this year, with the final matchup looming this Sunday afternoon in New Jersey. If they can’t beat the Jets, they’ll drop to sub-.500 for the first time since late 2015, and they’ll be 0-4 against a division expected to be among the weakest in the NFL before the season began. That would be, uh, not good.

Surprisingly, the Falcons are still a favorite as we speak, by somewhere around four points. This after three decent weeks of Jets football and three lousy weeks of Falcons football, which I guess tells you something about how the oddsmakers perceive the talent gap here. Then, the same thing was true of the Dolphins, and we saw how that went.

The biggest reason to believe in the Falcons is that the Jets are probably playing over their heads with a gutted roster that was supposed to bottom out and get them a top pick, while the Falcons have a top ten roster in terms of raw talent that is significantly underperforming. Eventually, those trends have to flip a bit, so why not this week, when the Jets are coming off a draining, close loss to the Dolphins?

If the Falcons can beat the Jets this weekend, they won’t be getting back on track so much as they will be preventing the train from barreling off into the dense forest, but it’s still a needed victory. Hopefully we don’t have to sweat this one, but I have my doubts.