This Was the Moment That Won the Game for the Falcons

TAMPA – The Atlanta Falcons stunned the Tampa Bay Buccaneers at the buzzer on Thursday Night Football, and they have one critical moment they can point to for why.

With the Falcons trailing by eight points with 5:05 left in the fourth quarter, Kirk Cousins dropped back and found Darnell Mooney for a massive gain. But that is when the worst came to pass, and he had the ball ripped out in front of seven Buccaneer defenders.

The Falcons recovered this fumble 🤯 pic.twitter.com/FELRlqS1ft
— NFL (@NFL) December 12, 2025

Quarterback Kirk Cousins admitted to heading to the sideline to walk off the field after he saw the ball hit the turf. The player who recovered this football was not even in the frame.

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“I said there’s no way! There’s no way he recovered that one,” Cousins beamed. “I just jogged off, and somebody looked at me and said we might have it!”

The offensive line has been coached to ‘cover’ on every offensive snap. When the ball is pushed down the field, offensive line coach Dwayne Ledford has pushed his guys to run forward after it. They have it in their habits to the point that it spills over into walkthroughs.

“You are to run forward, you don’t know where or why, but you are to run forward.”

On Thursday night, that reason was found out.

Ryan Neuzil came out of nowhere and was able to throw his body into a pile of Buccaneers and emerged with the football. The Falcons would retain possession and proceed to score a critical touchdown on that drive.

“That’s what we preach, everybody running to the football,” tight end Kyle Pitts Sr. said after the game. “We, as a team, will say that Neuzil sealed that game for us.”

For the Falcons, this felt like a galvanizing moment.

“We’ve obviously been talking about finding a way, that’s finding a way,” Falcons head coach Raheem Morris said after the game.

“When you cover like that, it saved the game,” Cousins added.

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This play, and the overall fight of this team, are emblematic of what Morris and the rest of this team had been saying all week in the buildup to this game. They insisted that they were together and ready for this challenge, that they were ready to play spoiler.

On Thursday night, they found a way.