Albert Breer’s Notes: It Was a Mistake to Judge the Falcons After Week 2

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Atlanta Falcons
Aaron Donald
New England Patriots
Cowboys’ and Rams’ schedules
Jacksonville Jaguars
Derrick Henry
Chicago Bears
Seattle Seahawks

We are nearly a quarter of the way through the season, and it’s time for your post–Week 4 Tuesday Notes …

Atlanta Falcons

The Falcons are an example of why it’s dumb to draw sweeping conclusions after a week or two of the season.

The answers were there for everyone. New coaches. Starting quarterback out. Backup quarterback out, too. And enough having gone wrong in losses to the Panthers (who are scoring on everyone now) and to the Steelers for most folks to look at their Week 3 Thursday nighter at Lambeau as a sort of get-well game for the Packers.

Since then, Michael Penix Jr. has reentered the lineup, Kevin Stefanski has gotten his feet underneath him as the team’s head coach and the results are clear.

After going 2-of-7 for 22 yards and a pick in the first quarter against Green Bay, Penix is 31-of-38 for 457 yards and two touchdowns over his last seven quarters—which adds up to a pristine 134.2 passer rating. Meanwhile, a running game that was good over the first two weeks has become great, churning out 447 yards on 76 carries over the past two weeks, with Bjian Robinson accounting for 339 yards and four touchdowns on 48 carries in those games. Top receiver Drake London’s gotten in the act, too, with 14 catches for 290 yards.

The Falcons’ star players are starting to play like stars, a veteran offensive line has settled in and Penix is developing in an environment where he doesn’t have to carry the team. The defense was good the first two weeks, and has been even better the past two.

Who saw this coming a couple of weeks back?

I didn’t. But I did know well enough not to pass judgment on too many things at that point.

And now, Atlanta is on its way, with another showcase game coming Sunday night at home against the Ravens.

Aaron Donald

A nuance in Donald’s contract came into play this week that’s worth pointing out.

I have a lot of thoughts on the morality of per-game roster bonuses in a sport where players put their bodies on the line every week (we’ll save those for another time), but they’ve become common in contracts. Normally, they’re based on the player being on the 46-man game-day roster, which protects the team financially if a player can’t make it out there physically.

Donald’s contract, which maxes out at $30 million, has a $10 million base, and then another $10 million in per-game roster bonuses. But those roster bonuses are based on Donald being on the 53-man active roster, rather than the 46-man game-day roster.

So on Sunday, Donald was inactive due to a back issue. But he still made his $666,667 bonus for the week because it wasn’t based on him being on the roster on game day, but rather being on the active roster at all. And that illustrates nicely how the team got protection if Donald were to suffer a longer-term injury, while the player in this case was protected if he had something shorter term he was dealing with.

For what it’s worth, it also puts less pressure on everyone to force the 35-year-old Donald out onto the field when he’s nicked up. Which should be good for the Rams, and Donald, when taking into account what all this might look like in January or February.

Efton Chism III makes a one-handed catch. — Efton Chism III made a one-handed touchdown grab in the Patriots’ win over the Bills. | IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

New England Patriots

I noticed after the Patriots’ win in Buffalo on Sunday how Mike Vrabel told the media that Efton Chism III—one of the afternoon’s heroes for New England—had earned his spot through work ethic that showed in his initiative to set up daily 6 a.m. meetings with receivers coach Todd Downing. So I asked Chism about how those came about.

“It just kind of started last year,” Chism told me. “I wanted to go in there and kind of get ahead on things. So every day that we’re going in the building, I’m there and he’s prepared. And I love him as a coach and he’s been so awesome to me, helping me continue to grow and continue to make plays. And he was one of the first people to come celebrate with me [after the game-winning touchdown Sunday]. So I appreciate him and all the work he does.

“He doesn’t have to be there that early. He doesn’t have to set things up for me. But he does. And I appreciate him so much for it.”

Interestingly enough, this tradition to start the day got its roots at the end of a few days in the 2025 offseason, after Chism arrived as an undrafted free agent. Downing noticed that Chism would still be in the building as the coaches were wrapping up, studying in the receiver room. So he’d mentioned to him that he was always available if Chism needed him for anything. Chism took him up on that in the days to follow, seeing that Downing was in the office early in the day, and going in to meet with him then.

Soon after that, Mack Hollins—who has become a mentor to Chism after the rookie gravitated to him early on—started having similar meetings with Downing. Now, all the receivers do.

Anyway, I thought all of that was pretty cool. As for how the Patriots wound up with Chism in the first place, that’s interesting, too. He had a big week at the Hula Bowl, which earned him an invite to the East-West Shrine Game, where he was similarly uncoverable. The Patriots were on him then, and worked on getting him in for a visit, before he ran a 4.7 40 at his pro day. Interest waned a tad. Still, they stayed with him, got the coaches involved, had Mike Vrabel and Josh McDaniels recruit him, and they landed him after the draft.

Chism picked the Patriots in part because of McDaniels’s history with smaller slot receivers, the fit’s been there, Chism has taken advantage of his on-field chances and results are coming.

Cowboys’ and Rams’ schedules

The Cowboys and Rams have felt the weight of the NFL’s schedule through four weeks.

For Dallas, it meant going to Rio for Sunday of Week 3, coming back on a 10-and-a-half-hour flight, and going right into a work week for a road game (the teams going to Brazil in previous years opened the season there on a Friday and had two extra days of rest on the back end), with a Thursday nighter after that, which is this week against the Buccaneers.

For the Rams, it meant starting the season literally on the other side of the world, in Melbourne, then playing in Week 3 on the road in Denver on a short week, before going home and turning around again for a cross-country trip to Philadelphia in Week 4. They have another short week coming in Week 6, by the way, and because they’re one of the teams playing on Thanksgiving Eve, a Wednesday, they don’t have a true bye week this year.

So are these teams pleased with all that? I can say, at least with the people I’ve talked to, the answer is no. But the silver lining here is that it is helping show the coaches and players what they have in terms of resilience early in the season.

“One-hundred percent,” Cowboys coach Brian Schottenheimer said to me. “Because we know the mental fortitude and toughness it takes to do this, and fly 10 and a half hours both ways after a tough game that we lost, and get two days off and then be back Wednesday having to do all the walkthrough stuff and then play a physical opponent like we did. And now we get to fly back home, and same thing.

“We know how to do short weeks, yes, but this team is as tight as any team I've ever been around.”

Jacksonville Jaguars

I was doing a little research on the Jaguars, and one phrase that came into my head was one I learned following the College Football Playoff criteria: game control.

Through four games, the Jaguars have led their opponents for 2:48:33 of the four hours of game time they’ve been engaged in, which is second only to Baltimore (2:54:03). And they only trailed for 7:21 through four weeks, which is easily an NFL best (the Ravens are second in that category, at 23:40).

So what does that tell you? It tells me that this is a complete team, and its game management, with Liam Coen at the helm, is at a really high level.

Derrick Henry

I did a little asking around on Henry last week, since the 11-year vet was playing against his old team for the first time. It was a relatively uneventful “revenge” game, with the Ravens’ star going for 73 yards and a score on 23 carries, plus six yards on two catches against the Titans.

Anyway, after Henry said last week that Tennessee let him go without much of a struggle, I was interested to hear how it happened. At the time, Ran Carthon was the Titans’ GM, and Brian Callahan had just been hired as head coach to guide another rebuild. The two looked at all the factors—his volume of carries, the nature of wear and tear at the position, the price tag and the year Henry was coming off—against the team’s longer-term interests.

At that point, the Titans made the decision that they’d move on. Carthon talked to Henry, who was gracious in accepting Tennessee’s call, and even agreeing that a divorce was in the best interests of everyone at the time. And that, of course, wound up being especially true for Henry, who went from a career-low 4.2 yards per carry in 2023 to a career-high 5.9 yards per carry as part of a 1,921-yard season in Baltimore in 2024.

Does that mean it was a mistake for the Titans to let him go? Maybe. But I’m not really sure that investing in an older running back, based on where Tennessee was at the time and has been since, would’ve made much of a difference for the franchise he left.

Chicago Bears

So the Bears now have three wins with three different starting quarterbacks.

Even more impressive are the offensive numbers from those games. With Caleb Williams in Week 1, the Bears ran up 59 points, 552 yards and 26 first downs on Carolina. With Case Keenum in Week 3, Chicago had 27 points, 375 yards and 24 first downs against Philadelphia. With Tyson Bagent in Week 4, the Bears went for 23 points, 492 yards and 34 first downs on the Jets.

Ben Johnson’s pretty good.

Seattle Seahawks

Finally, Zach Charbonnet is a name to watch going forward, with the Seahawks moving rookie Jadarian Price to injured reserve, and passing on veteran Joe Mixon, who had come in for a physical. Charbonnet was becoming a real force for Seattle last year before tearing his ACL, to the point where his role was even with Kenneth Walker III’s as the regular season wound down. Then he got hurt in Seattle’s first playoff game.

Charbonnet finished last year with 874 scrimmage yards (730 on the ground) as Walker’s sidekick, and will be playing for a new contract when he comes back from the knee injury. The team opened his practice window at the end of last week. He won’t play this week against the 49ers, but Week 6 or 7 is possible—with the former perhaps only complicated by the fact that it’s a Thursday nighter.

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