Falcons left tackle Jake Matthews has started 184 consecutive regular season games, but that streak is in some jeopardy heading into Week 7.
Matthews had to leave Monday night’s win over the Bills after injuring his ankle in the third quarter. On Tuesday, Falcons head coach Raheem Morris said that Matthews is considered day-to-day while noting that it would take a lot for him to miss a game.
“We know who he is,” Morris said, via Terrin Waack of the team’s website. “We know that he doesn’t miss something. We’ll just have to see. But I feel really positive about him and what happened based on not having any idea last night.”
Michael Jerrell took over for Matthews against Buffalo and would be in line to be the first player other than Matthews to start at left tackle for Atlanta since 2014.
The season began with a rollicking, intoxicating, come-from-behind, night-for-the-ages win against the Ravens. Through six weeks, where are the Buffalo Bills?
They started 4-0. They were regarded as the odds-on favorite to win the Super Bowl. They’re STILL the +650 favorite to do what they’ve never done, with the Chiefs just behind them at 7-1.
Let’s take a look at what the Bills have actually done this year. Their win over the Ravens doesn’t look nearly as impressive as it did at the time, now that Baltimore is 1-5. And the Bills had to make a late defensive play to fend off the 1-5 Dolphins. Then, the 1-5 Saints had a chance to beat the Bills in Buffalo. The only convincing win came in Week 2 against the 0-6 Jets.
In all, the Bills’ four wins have come against teams with a combined record of 3-21.
Since then, Buffalo has lost a pair of prime-time games — against the Patriots in Week 5 and last night against the Falcons. Now, Buffalo has extra time to get ready for a visit to Carolina, where the Panthers have the pieces to do what the Falcons did to them.
As Devin McCourty said on Tuesday’s PFT Live, the Bills got bullied in Atlanta.
Throughout the game, quarterback Josh Allen looked bewildered. And the team collectively seemed to think he was one play away, at any given time, from turning the eventual loss into a win.
So, yes, the Bills need to do some soul searching. They need to get key players healthy. And they need to reverse the current trend, or they could exit the Week 9 game against the Chiefs at 4-4.
There’s a chance that, beyond Allen and running back James Cook, the Bills just aren’t good enough.
It’s good for the notion that anything can happen. It’s bad for a Bills fanbase that was eyeing February flight options and hotel accommodations in the Bay Area.
Falcons quarterback Michael Penix played on Monday night for the first time this week and he believes he and his team made a strong statement against the Bills.
Penix threw for 250 yards and a touchdown and the Falcons rolled to a 24-14 home win that moved their record to 3-2 on the season. In an on-field interview with the team’s website after the game, Penix said that it also showed that the Falcons are “here and here to stay,” which was a sentiment he returned to during his postgame press conference.
“It showed that we’re one of the ones,” Penix said. “This team is really good. This team is really legit.”
While Penix was obviously feeling good about the state of things in Atlanta, he did allow that there’s still more for the team to do. They scored 21 of their 24 points in the first half and Penix said the team will be “a scary sight” when they are able to put together a full game that looks as good as those first 30 minutes. A week 7 trip to face the 49ers offers a chance for them to do that.
Falcons running back Bijan Robinson had another big game in Monday night’s win over the Bills, and he’s on pace to have one of the biggest seasons in NFL history.
With 170 rushing yards and 68 receiving yards on Monday, Robinson now has 484 rushing yards and 338 receiving yards this season. That total of 822 yards from scrimmage leads the NFL, even though the Falcons have only played five games and most teams have played six.
If he keeps up his current pace of 164 scrimmage yards per game, Robinson would finish the season with 2,795 yards from scrimmage this season. The current record of 2,509 yards was set by Titans running back Chris Johnson in 2009. Johnson broke the record in a 16-game season, and Robinson is actually on pace to break Johnson’s record in the 16th game of this season.
Robinson is on pace to run for 1,647 yards and add 1,149 receiving yards. He’s on pace to join Roger Craig in 1985, Marshall Faulk in 1999 and Christian McCaffrey in 2019 as the only players to top 1,000 yards both rushing and receiving in a season.
Bijan Robinson ran for 170 yards, and Drake London had 158 yards receiving as the Falcons ran over the Bills 24-14 on Monday night.
The Falcons improved to 3-2, while the Bills fell out of first place in the AFC East after back-to-back losses dropped them to 4-2.
The Falcons outgained the Bills 443 to 291 yards. The Bills had two turnovers and eight penalties; they punted six times; and they scored on only two of 11 possessions.
The Falcons went only 1-of-3 in the red zone and had a 37-yard field goal blocked. Otherwise, the score would not have been as close as it was.
Robinson had an 81-yard touchdown and ended up with 238 yards of total offense on 25 touches. London caught 10 passes and scored on a 9-yard reception. He came up 1 yard short of the end zone on the final play of the first half when Taylor Rapp saved a touchdown by getting London to step out of bounds before the goal line.
Tyler Allgeier had a 21-yard touchdown run and had 32 yards on 10 carries.
Michael Penix went 20-of-32 for 250 yards and a touchdown.
Josh Allen, who threw only six interceptions last season in winning the MVP award, threw his third and fourth interceptions of the season. Dee Alford and DeAngelo Malone had the picks of Allen, who was 15-of-26 for 180 yards with two touchdowns.
Ray Davis and Dawson Knox had the touchdown receptions, and James Cook had 17 carries for 87 yards.
