Are Falcons Showing They Are Learning How to Win Games?

ATLANTA – The Atlanta Falcons put together what may have been their best win of the 2025 season in Week 17. Under the lights of Monday Night Football, the Falcons toppled the playoff-bound Los Angeles Rams 27-24, in a game they never trailed.

For a team outside the postseason yet again, it was a moment in time that reminded them of who they really are, or at least what they could have been this season.

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Running back Bijan Robinson did it best, reaffirming his head coach’s branding as the NFL’s best player, rushing for 195 yards, topping 200 scrimmage yards (breaking a franchise record in the process), and reaching the endzone twice.

“I said this 18 weeks ago, [but] he is the best player in football,” Raheem Morris said after the game. “It's just as simple as that. He's unbelievable, everything he does for our football team, from running the football to catching the football to protection, to him being a leader – he's also our chaplain. He does it all. He's unbelievable.”

Defensively, the Falcons held the league’s top offense off the board in the first half and suffocated their vaunted passing attack.

Rookie safety Xavier Watts picked off MVP front-runner Matthew Stafford twice, while his veteran running mate Jessie Bates III returned the team’s first defensive touchdown of the season. Atlanta also sacked Stafford three times.

Cornerback A.J. Terrell Jr. was an eraser in the secondary, forcing seven tight-window targets against the Rams, tied for the most by a defender in a game this season. The veteran often matched up with Pro Bowl receiver Puka Nacua and held him in check, according to NextGenStats. Terrell allowed just two catches (five targets) to Nacua for 17 yards.

“He’s just a great receiver, we knew that going into this week that we had to slow down 12 [Nacua], and we executed,” Terrell said. “We just wanted to put our best foot forward, so we went out there and just made the plays that we had to.”

As has been the case many times before, the Falcons’ overall performance was far from without its fair share of warts.

After racing out to a 24-3 lead, Atlanta gave up three touchdowns and the lead between the 5:00 mark in the third quarter and the 2:46 mark in the fourth. One of those scores came with 0:31 remaining in the third quarter, after Jared Verse blocked, caught, and returned a Zane Gonzalez field goal attempt 76 yards for a touchdown.

In addition to their play on the field in the second half, the Falcons also potentially lost standout defensive lineman Brandon Dorlus to a knee injury that Morris said “didn’t look great.”

All of this felt like a story the Falcons had produced several times before – late leads morphing into overtime heartbreakers or missed opportunities leaving a scorched earth in its wake – but a nine-play, 32-yard drive from Kirk Cousins and the offense put that anxiety to rest late in the game.

Gonzalez stepped in and drilled what proved to be a game-winning 51-yard field goal, his second in three weeks.

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The Falcons, who now sit at 7-9 with a chance to finish in a three-way tie for first place in the NFC South despite being eliminated from the postseason for nearly a month, have won three-straight for the first time this season and only the second time under Morris.

In hair-pulling fashion, all three of these wins have come since being eliminated. Frustrating for fans, but an illustration that this is a team that is still learning how to win football games.

“I know we joke about it a lot, but they just found ways to win,” Morris said, praising the mentality that his team brought to the building despite the lack of results earlier in the season. “They’re doing that now.”

After starting 3-7, the Falcons are 4-2 with the chance to finish the season 8-9. Still below .500 for the eighth season in a row, but a far cry from a team that looked lost just a few weeks ago when Michael Penix Jr. went down with a season-ending knee injury.

Jake Matthews knows this team has the pieces, and the last few weeks have reaffirmed what he already knew about this team.

“We know we've got the pieces and the guys in here and the talent,” the left tackle said. “I can't say enough how good of an example today was of that we've got the pieces and the guys in here and the talent, and obviously just finding ways to finish and execute.”

That sentiment was echoed by Bates after the game.

“We confirmed who we are, that our record doesn’t reflect who we are as a group. We’re two, three, four snaps away from being in the same picture with Carolina and the Bucs,” Bates explained. “Right now, we’re just worried about building that foundation for next year.”

While uncertainty awaits them on the other side of Week 18, the Falcons will have one more chance to show that they are closer to a winning outfit than the one that took the field earlier this season. They have shown that they are learning how to win games, but whether it is enough to overshadow the first 11 weeks of the season is a different question entirely.