NFL Network's Season Prediction Disastrous for Atlanta Falcons

A month ago, the Atlanta Falcons were coming off a convincing win over the AFC power Buffalo Bills in front of a national audience on Monday night football to move their record to 3-2. It was a statement win for head coach Raheem Morris and his team.

Unfortunately, the statement turned out to be: "We can't handle prosperity."

The Falcons have lost four straight since then, have fallen to 3-6, and more telling, they are 5-12 over their last 17 games, the equivalent of a full season.

Lending credence to the thought that they get nose bleeds if they climb too high, Atlanta is 0-3 as favorites this season, and 3-3 as underdogs. The up-and-down nature of the team has made them tough to predict from game to game, but NFL Network's Ali Bhanpuri has seen enough to sell on Morris and his Falcons this year.

Bhanpuri predicted the remaining record for every NFL team, and he has the Falcons continuing their current course and taking their 3-6 record to a 6-11 finish. He originally picked the Falcons to be 4-5 through nine games en route to an 8-9 final record.

The Falcons came up one game short of that prediction, and he flipped his preseason prediction of a win in Arizona to a Falcons loss.

"I was right about ... the Falcons' unpredictability this season," Bhanpuri wrote on NFL.com. "Atlanta was the only team I had winning seven or more games without ever posting back-to-back Ws. I haven't accurately forecasted much about this team so far ... but that little prediction remains on track. I was wrong about ... Weeks 1-5. Missed. Every. Single. Game."

Bhanpuri has a double down section, where he doubled down on his prediction that the Falcons wouldn't win back-to-back games in 2025. It just goes to show that even an entity with as many resources as the NFL can make a mistake, and then double down on it.

The Falcons beat the Washington Commanders and Buffalo Bills in prime time in consecutive games to move to 3-2 and once again provide false hope to their fans.

The second half of the Falcons' schedule lightens up, on paper at least, starting this weekend when they are 4.5-point favorites over the Carolina Panthers. Of course, the last time we saw the Falcons as favorites over the Panthers, they went home having been plucked 30-0 in Week 3.

The Falcons then travel to New Jersey to face the Jets (2-8) and then to the Big Easy to face the Saints (2-8). It's conceivable that they could win back-to-back games (again) and possibly even three in a row, to reignite talk of the playoffs in Atlanta.

Morris and Co. have done little to show they can get the team playing consistently enough week-to-week in order to pull off a winning streak. But if they're going to attempt to save this season, and possibly a lot of jobs, it starts this week at home in a revenge game against the Panthers.