The Atlanta Falcons added another loss in Week 9, dropping to 3-6, after falling to the Cincinnati Bengals, 34-17. They only had to fly over 4,200 miles to Madrid, Spain to do it.
Atlanta has now lost four of their last five, at this point, the 2026 Falcons are just Scooby-Doo'ing everyone: remove the mask and you still see the Falcons of the previous eight seasons. At least this time around they might be committing to a rebuild after trading Jessie Bates III to Jacksonville.
For eight consecutive seasons, the Falcons have tried to fool everyone with new coaching staffs, high draft picks and even veteran quarterbacks under hefty contracts, all to reveal they are the same ole Falcons that have yet to recover from 28-3. (I'm sorry, but it had to be mentioned.)
These teams for the last eight years have fooled us all into believing, beginning in the first half of the season, where they are by no means Super Bowl contenders, but because of their residency to the dysfunctional NFC South, they're "good enough" to pull it out at the end.
Then November shows up, and the mask comes off.
The Atlanta Falcons have a pattern of struggling later on in the season
Let's briefly summarize the last eight years, shall we?
2018: They beat Washington on Nov. 4 to get to 4-4. Then they lost five straight. They won the last three when nothing was at stake, finished 7-9 and gave us the first of many "see, we're close" December runs.
2019: This is the one exception. They started 1-7, then went 6-2 the rest of the way to finish 7-9. Of course, the only year they got better in November was the year they’d already buried themselves in October. It saved Dan Quinn’s job for about five more games.
2020: This one was over before November. They started 0-5, and Quinn and Thomas Dimitroff were both fired on Oct. 11. Raheem Morris took over as interim and steadied things enough to get them to 2-6 by Halloween. They went 2-6 from November on, lost their final five games and finished 4-12. They didn’t beat a single team with a winning record all season.
2021: Arthur Smith’s first year. A last-second win in New Orleans on Nov. 7 got them to 4-4. The next two weeks, they lost 43-3 in Dallas and 25-0 at home to New England. They went 4-6 from November on and finished 7-10. Matt Ryan was traded to Indianapolis that offseason.
2022: A shootout win over Carolina on Oct. 30 got them to 4-4. They lost the next two, including a Thursday night game in Charlotte, and went 3-6 the rest of the way.
2023: 4-4 again. At one point they were in first place in the NFC South. They went 3-6 from November on, and Arthur Smith was fired.
2024: This was the cruelest one. They beat Dallas on Nov. 3 to go 6-3, their best start since 2016. Kirk Cousins was playing on a four-year, $180 million deal, and for about six weeks it looked like the money was well spent. Then they lost four straight, Cousins got benched for Michael Penix Jr. before Christmas, and they lost the finale to Carolina in overtime to finish 8-9. That was seven straight losing seasons. But what else were we to expect with Morris as head coach?
2025: Looking back, this was a dress rehearsal for this season. Atlanta started November at 3-4, flew to Berlin and lost to the Colts in overtime, part of a stretch where they lost six of seven. They were out of the playoffs by Week 14. After that they won their last four, including a Week 18 win over New Orleans that handed the division to Carolina. They finished 8-9 again, and Morris was fired.
Add it up. Since 2018, the Falcons are 25-36 in September and October and 30-42 from November on. That’s a .410 winning percentage before the clocks fall back and .417 after. Three head coaches, two franchise quarterbacks, a couple of top-10 picks, and not enough improvement to call it a rounding error.
My son has changed more in his first year of life than this franchise has in eight.
Which brings us back to Madrid. The 2026 Falcons didn’t even wait for November to start pulling the mask off. Now, they're well under .500 with Kansas City, Minnesota and Detroit ahead on the schedule. This is the part where the old version of me starts looking at NFC South standings and talking myself into it.
Nope. Not this time. It’s November. We’ve seen what’s under the mask.
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