:format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/65392170/1173019299.jpg.0.jpg)
Ah, autumn. The season where the temperatures drop, the leaves fall, and the Falcons do both of those things as well. LINK TIME!
Getting ready for Houston, where we may have a problem
The week is long enough that it gets sort of draggy from Wednesday to Friday, when we know we have a matchup coming up but we’re sort of sleepy from all the post-loss rage we had earlier in the week. Now it’s time to really, seriously start thinking about what the Falcons might do against the Texans.
As is customary, Kevin Knight takes us through a breakdown by the numbers to see how these two teams compare, try to understand how the Falcons defense matches up against the Houston offense, and compare two dispirited fanbases and their relative level of confidence. We even had Jeanna Thomas asking us for a slogan that would turn things around against the Texans, but sadly we can’t travel into the future to see which one actually works.
Playoffs? Playoffs?!
It’s laughable to even think about in the here and now, but Evan Birchfield did the hard work of investigating just how likely a playoff berth is for this Falcons team at 1-3. The good news is that it’s not impossible—the 1-3 Texans went 11-5 and made the playoffs just last year, somehow—but the odds are quite long and the Falcons pretty much have to start winning now. The only positive? The Texans team they’re facing has no shortage of its own dysfunction.
Time for sacks
The Falcons have but five sacks this year, but as I wrote yesterday, they’ve been one of the league’s better teams at actually getting pressure and winning one-on-one matchups. All that pressure and their multiple forced fumbles have led to only a handful of sacks and a single fumble recovery, which indicates a team that has been both bad and unlucky.
If that luck is going to turn anytime soon, it’ll likely be in these next two weeks, against a slapdash Texans offensive line and a banged-up, already poor Cardinals line. Let’s hope it’s a game changer Sunday against Houston.