With the Falcons playing in their second game in five days, following their worst statistical defeat since the 1990s, I had just one hope during their Thursday Night Football clash against the New England Patriots — that they don’t embarrass themselves on national television.

The Atlanta professional football team crushed that hope, as their offense was made to look like a high school unit by a Patriots coaching staff which completely outclassed Atlanta’s throughout the entire evening.

For the first time since 1988, the Falcons were shut out at home. Of course, that made it a brutal proposition for anyone who started any Falcons on Thursday Night Football this week. Let’s dive into the ugliness.

There is a lot of great content available here at the Falcoholic, and I encourage you to check it out if you want some in-depth analysis. This article will look at things strictly from a fantasy football perspective (that means looking at nothing other than pure statistics). Here are Atlanta’s fantasy stud and fantasy dud from Week 11’s defeat against the New England Patriots’

Fantasy Stud/Dud 2021 History:

Past Studs: Cordarrelle Patterson (4), Kyle Pitts (3), Younghoe Koo (1), Matt Ryan

Past Duds: Mike Davis (3), Kyle Pitts (2) Matt Ryan (2), Younghoe Koo (1), Olamide Zaccheaus (1)

Stud: Nobody

The Falcons offense was violated so significantly that I had to violate my own personal rule of always picking out and praising at least one player in any given week. For the first time in four years of doing this weekly series, I don’t have a single nice thing to say about anyone’s fantasy performance.

Matt Ryan was brutal. Kyle Pitts was held to under 30 yards. The run game was once again a mess with no Cordarrelle Patterson. No wide receivers stepped up in Calvin Ridley’s absence. Even Younghoe Koo missed his only official kick attempt of the game. Maybe we can try again next week.

Dud

Matt Ryan: 153 passing yards, 0 passing touchdowns, 2 interceptions: 2.12 standard league/PPR points

Ryan gets dud dishonors for the second consecutive week, as he tallied less than 200 yards, no touchdowns, and multiple interceptions once again. He finished as the overall QB34 last week (remember, there are 32 starting QBs in each given week), and he’ll surely be outside the top 25 once again.

Before anybody tries to make a point about how bad the offensive line and pass catching options were — and they were very bad — I would just like to preemptively say that none of that matters in fantasy football. The only thing looked at is what’s on the stat sheet, and none of it has been good for Ryan over these past couple of games.

Nobody should have been starting Ryan anyway this week against a red hot Patriots defense, but 5.0% of NFL.com users did. Until Patterson gets back and proves to be healthy, it’ll be hard to trust Ryan in any matchup moving forward, even next week against the lowly Jaguars.