It’ll be a happy flight home for the Atlanta Falcons following a multi-week West Coast trip, one which ended on a positive note with a victory in the Pacific Northwest. Given the upcoming schedule, it would have been very difficult for the Birds to bounce back from an 0-3 start to the season, but fortunately they won’t have to worry about having to do so.

It was an impressive offensive performance in the state of Washington for Arthur Smith’s unit, with multiple players contributing. Not even a rogue drone could slow down the offense. With the scoring aplenty, fantasy managers also benefited from the Falcons in their lineup.

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 2’s victory against the Seattle Seahawks.

Fantasy Stud/Dud 2022 History:

Past Studs: Cordarrelle Patterson (1), Drake London (1)

Past Duds: Kyle Pitts (2)

Fantasy Stud - Cordarrelle Patterson

Stat Line: 17 carries, 141 rushing yards, 1 rushing touchdown, 1 catch, 12 receiving yards: 21.30 standard league points; 22.30 PPR points

Take a bow CP. Two weeks after he tied the second-best yards from scrimmage mark in his career, Patterson bested that yardage total after setting a new career high in rushing yards against Seattle.

The coaching staff tried to cap CP’s carries a little bit in Week 2 — he and Tyler Allgeier each saw 10 totes — but it feels like they realized that the team’s best chance to win is to unleash Patterson in the run game, and the result was him out-carrying Allgeier 17-9 in Week 3. Patterson averaged an incredible 8.3 yards per carry and he had the Seahawks defense absolutely befuddled all afternoon.

Going into the Monday Night Football game (the final game of the week), Patterson is the overall PPR RB5 and the overall standard league RB3 both in Week 3 and at this point in the season overall. Those are absolutely elite marks, which are making CP a complete steal at his ADP.

Just like last season, Patterson has quickly ascended to “set and forget” status in your lineups. No matter the matchup, continue to fire him up.

Dud

Falcons Defense/Special Teams: 2 sacks, 1 interception, 23 points allowed, 420 yards allowed

Atlanta’s defense was on the streaming radar this week, at the very least as a desperation play, as the Seahawks have been grouped into the category of low-powered offenses to target in the fantasy streaming space.

However, the Falcons got absolutely sliced and diced up by Geno Smith and company, especially in the first half. The Seahawks scored on four of their five first half drives and had 20 points on the board at the break, and then they kicked a field goal on their first drive of the second half. Luckily, Seattle’s offense only had time to put together two more drives after that, but they put up points on five out of eight drives in this game overall.

Atlanta’s defense saved a little bit of face on its final two plays of the game — a Grady Jarrett sack and then a game sealing Richie Grant interception on a desperation 4th and long play. Those two plays alone gave the defense three of their four total points.