Last season, the Atlanta Falcons had one of the worst kicking games in the NFL. Between Younghoe Koo, Parker Romo, and Zane Gonzalez, they didn't have an ounce of stability in this area last season, so they signed one of the most accurate kickers in the NFL in Nick Folk to help remedy that issue.
We saw firsthand the number of games poor kicking helped Raheem Morris' Falcons lose in 2025, and through one game in 2026, those issues are still there. Unfortunately, Folk's reputation as automatic didn't help him in his season debut, as the 20-13 loss to the Steelers was partly on him.
Last season, the ageless wonder went 28-of-29 on field goal attempts with the New York Jets. One mised kick all season. But in the Week 1 loss, he already missed more field goals than that, as he missed two of his four field goal attempts on the game, failing to convert from 45 and 54 yards out.
The Atlanta Falcons are still dealing with issues in the kicking game
The crazier part is that Nick Folk missed his first two field goals of the season before converting from 51 and 43 yards, but those missed kicks have to leave a bad taste in our mouth. If he makes those, there's no telling how this game ends--they would've had real merit to win even with Cooper Rush starting.
The two made field goals would have put Atlanta down by one in Pittsburgh, but they both went wide. And unfortunately this is a story we know all too well. Koo missed a potential game-tying FG in Week 1 against the Bucs last season that if he made it would've sent the game to overtime, while Romo missed a game-tying extra point against the reigning AFC Champion New England Patriots.
It's not like anyone is losing faith in the 41-year-old quite yet, but this is hardly what anyone envisioned from the kicker special teams coordinator Craig Aukerman handpicked. He's still one of the best in the game, but is probably just as much to blame for the 0-1 start as Rush is--if not more. But it is just one game, and Week 1 is notorious for producing overreactions about the season.
The Falcons signed Folk to a three-year, $9 million deal in free agency to ask him to do one thing: drill field goals. And so far he hasn't done that. But it's not like he's Koo who was getting worse over time. This was a small roadblock for a kicker who has been among the league's best for years now.
Thankfully, FanSided's resident kicker expert Adam Fromal sees this as more of a regular off day than any sign about Father Time catching up to Folk based on what we saw from him this summer.
"One game is an awfully thin sample, and the opening week tends to come with hyperbolized overreactions not found when a middle-of-the-season outing goes just as poorly," Fromal wrote. Plus, Folk didn't even wait until the final whistle to start turning things around."
The good news here is that like Fromal, both Aukerman and Kevin Stefanski still believe in Nick Folk, so if you're a true believer in the Dirty Birds, you're seeing this issues in the kicking game are still here--but one week isn't enough of a sample size to determine that things will stay this way.
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