Our defense vs their offense: Atlanta Falcons

The New Orleans Saints will hit the road for the second time this season and travel to Atlanta to play the “Dirty Birds” in Mercedes-Benz Stadium this Sunday.

The Saints defense is off to a hot start to the 2024 season, allowing just 14.7 points per game through three weeks. Say what you want about the final defensive drive last week where they let up that huge gain to Dallas Goedert when two defenders ran into each other, but that loss was not on the defense. They played their butts off for the entire game and held a good Eagles offense to 15 points while forcing multiple turnovers and getting a pair of fourth down stops.

This week, they get the Falcons, who are led by new quarterback, Kirk Cousins. Through three weeks, Atlanta is averaging 16.3 points per game, which ranks 26th in the league. Kirk Cousins is playing far from his best football, tossing for 626 yards, four touchdowns and three interceptions behind a 66% completion percentage. This is his first year with new players, a new offensive scheme, and he’s coming off a torn Achilles, so it was always going to take some time for them to mesh. I don’t think they’re suddenly going to figure things out this week, but by the time they roll into New Orleans later in the season, they might be more dangerous, but that’s a problem for later.

With Kirk Cousins at the helm, the Atlanta Falcons are averaging 199.7 passing yards per game this season. They have four receivers – Darnell Mooney, Drake London, Ray-Ray McCloud and Kyle Pitts – who have 100+ yards receiving this year, but none of them have eclipsed that 200-yard mark yet. They have a balanced passing attack, even if it isn’t very good.

Despite all the injuries to the Saints this week, the defensive back room looks pretty healthy. Alontae Taylor did not practice on Wednesday, but he was ruled out with an illness. With four more days until the Saints play, he should be fine by then. If they have everyone healthy, there’s no reason the Saints DBs shouldn’t be able to put a stop to Atlanta’s WRs. What worries me is Kyle Pitts. I know it’s a running joke that he’s a bad tight end and hasn’t lived up to the hype, which is true, but we’ve seen tight ends destroy a Saints defense many times in the past – including last week – so not taking him seriously is a recipe for disaster.

Atlanta is a very middle-of-the-pack rushing team. They average 107 yards per game on the ground, which ranks 18th in the league, but they average 4.3 yards per carry. Their leading rusher is obviously Bijan Robinson, who has nearly 200 yards on the ground through three games on 48 carries. They also still have Tyler Allgeier, who averages 5.6 yards per carry this season.

The Saints were enjoying a very good rushing defense through 2.5 games, but we saw Saquon Barkley completely take over last week in the second half and gash the Saints for 147 yards and two touchdowns on 17 carries. The Saints had their struggles against the run last year, and it looked like maybe they corrected them, but last week gave us some PTSD. Not to mention, the Saints could be without Demario Davis for this game. He DNP on Wednesday with a hamstring injury, and that would be a massive loss for the Saints, especially in the run game.

Atlanta’s offensive line has been very good at protecting Kirk Cousins through three games. They’ve allowed five sacks (or 1.7 per game), which ranks 8th in the league, but they face a Saints defense that has been on fire rushing the passer. The Saints are sacking opposing quarterbacks 3.7 times per game, which is tied for fifth in the league to this point. Cousins is not a very mobile QB, especially with his Achilles injury still a factor, so the Saints should be able to get after him and rattle him on Sunday.

Overall, if Davis and Taylor play, I think the Saints defense can hold the Falcons to under 20 points, which is what they’ll need to do if their offense plays as bad as it did last week. The Saints have had the Falcons number in recent years, winning 10 of the last 13 matchups, so we’ll see if they can make that 11 of the last 14 on Sunday.

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