Cordarrelle Patterson reportedly could miss Thursday Night Football against Patriots

Cordarrelle Patterson has been one of the NFL’s great stories of 2021, and an absolutely critical piece of this Falcons offense. It’s no exaggeration to say that without Patterson, this offense would probably have looked far worse over the past nine weeks, and alongside Kyle Pitts is the only truly reliable weapon this passing game has.

That’s why it’s very, very, very bad news that he appears to be on track to miss the Thursday night game against a tough Patriots team, per NFL insider Tom Pelissero.

Patterson, who was not in for the second half on Sunday in that blowout loss to the Cowboys, is indeed dealing with an injury. With nearly 800 combined yards and 7 combined touchdowns on the season, Patterson has been arguably the most critical piece of the entire offense, and without him the Falcons are going to be counting on a sure-to-be-blanketed Kyle Pitts and a host of players who haven’t been able to make much happen with Patterson on the field. That bodes extremely poorly for the passing attack, which does not have anyone with Patterson’s size, speed, elusiveness and production in 2021 to turn to. They’ll need to get much more out of Russell Gage, Olamide Zaccheaus, Hayden Hurst, and potentially even rookie Frank Darby to stay afloat over the next couple of weeks if Patterson is out. On the ground, Falcons will have to hope Mike Davis and Wayne Gallman can get it done on the ground against a good-but-not-stellar Patriots run defense.

If this report proves to be true, it’s an absolutely devastating blow for a team trying to work a miracle on a short week. There’s just no way to sugarcoat that, and the Patriots defense is far better on paper than the Cowboys defense that just held Atlanta to three points with Patterson on the field for half the game.

We’ll hope Patterson recovers quickly and is back and healthy as soon as possible. We’re going to miss him on Thursday night.