Falcons' Season Failures Summed Up In One Critical Stat

FLOWERY BRANCH – The Atlanta Falcons dropped a seventh game in their last eight for a familiar reason on Sunday. Their inability to convert on third-down opportunities has cost them games and has likely been a key reason for their lost season.

The Falcons were 1-of-13 in Week 14 against the Seattle Seahawks, and just 20-of-90 (22.2%) since this deluge of losses kicked off against San Francisco two months ago. For the season, the Falcons are 31st in the NFL with a 31% conversion rate, hold the league’s worst EPA/play on third-down, and no team has fewer conversions this season (48).

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Converting these plays is critical to the success of any competitive football team. ESPN’s Ben Baby posted a graphic that perfectly articulates the correlation between third-down offense and team success.

In case anyone needed reinforcement, teams that are good on third downs on both sides of the ball tend to be winning teams. pic.twitter.com/aOMDD4qDSq
— Ben Baby (@Ben_Baby) December 9, 2025

The Falcons find themselves in bad company. The franchises joining the Falcons in the bottom half of this graphic have a combined 87-120-1. The teams on the bottom-left are an even worse 35-82.

There are a handful of teams with playoff contentions alive on the bottom-right, but many of those teams on the right are trending down at the moment, too. They compensate for their issues on third downs by being more aggressive (and effective) on fourth downs.

Unsurprisingly, teams above this figurative Mendoza line on this graphic are far more likely to find themselves in playoff contention. 10 of the 14 teams in the current playoff field find themselves here, and they combine for a far superior 133-87.

“That's the most disappointing part of our offense is the third down,” Falcons offensive coordinator Zac Robinson said Tuesday. “In my time in L.A., I was in charge of third downs, and so that's always been kind of an area that I've always focused on when I was an assistant coach, a quarterbacks coach, and so, for it not to be going down the way that you're hoping is very frustrating.”

Head coach Raheem Morris said Monday that it comes to execution, an area where the Falcons have repeatedly come up short this season. Broken protections, mis-timed throws, and poorly executed routes have all been a part of the regular rotation of miscues.

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“You've just got to be on the screws with it because it is third down,” Robinson continued. “You're getting tighter coverage and man coverage a lot of the time, so just making sure that when we get those opportunities, we've definitely got to take advantage of it.”

Through 14 weeks of football, this team has been unable to accomplish that. As a result, the Falcons will finish outside of the postseason for the eighth season in a row, and they have locked in yet another losing season. The numbers make it easy to understand why.