Coaching and kicking cost Falcons in season opener

The highly anticipated 2025 season opener for the Falcons ended in the most Falcons way possible: with Younghoe Koo pushing a potentially game-tying 44-yard field goal wide right in the final seconds.

The game was a tale of two sides. On one hand, Falcons fans have every reason to be excited about the future. Michael Penix Jr. looks like the real deal. The rookie threw for nearly 300 yards, tossed a touchdown, and added another on the ground with a Houdini-like scramble on fourth down that briefly gave Atlanta the lead.

Penix was about as efficient as anybody could have expected, and his heroics in the fourth quarter have already become a staple of who he is as a quarterback. In each of the last three starts, he’s led the Falcons down the field multiple times late in the game to give his team a chance to tie or take the lead. Incredibly, Atlanta has found a way to lose all three of those games, thanks to some shoddy defense and really poor coaching from Raheem Morris and company.

The defense had an opportunity to put this one to bed. The Falcons led by three with just over two minutes to go before kicking the ball back to Baker Mayfield, who led the Bucs on a way too easy five-play, 63-yard touchdown drive to regain the lead with just under a minute left to play.

That collapse overshadows what was otherwise a strong defensive effort. Atlanta held the Bucs to just 260 total yards. Mayfield completed barely half his passes for 167 yards and was Tampa Bay’s leading rusher with just 39 yards. New additions Xavier Watts, Billy Bowman Jr., and Divine Deablo all flashed. The pressure packages worked. By the numbers, it was a winning defensive performance. So how did the Falcons still lose?

Most of the blame falls squarely on the shoulders of the coaching staff. Atlanta committed far too many penalties, wasted opportunities with poor play-calling, and once again faltered on special teams. Most glaringly, Morris stuck with Koo despite his costly misses in 2024, and it immediately backfired.

Morris’ decision not to play starters in the preseason also looked like a mistake. The mental errors and sloppy execution screamed of a team that wasn’t ready for real football. In the NFL, where games are almost always decided by a handful of plays, coaching and kicking matter.

And once again, Morris and Koo cost the Falcons.

That’s the shame of Week 1. The story should be Michael Penix Jr., who already looks like the franchise quarterback Atlanta has been chasing since Matt Ryan. Instead, the headlines are the same as last year: missed kicks, blown leads, and a coaching staff that can’t get out of its own way.

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