ATLANTA — It is not an overreaction to say the Falcons needed that.
One week after inexplicably losing 30-0 to the division-rival Panthers, then firing their wide receivers coach and announcing that their offensive coordinator would move from the booth to the sideline to fix whatever was wrong with the offense, Atlanta’s offense sprung back to life in a big way.
The Falcons racked up 435 total yards in a 34-27 victory over the Jayden Daniels-less Commanders. Drake London had 110 receiving yards and Bijan Robinson had 106. Each scored a touchdown, as did Kyle Pitts and Tyler Allgeier. Second-year QB Michael Penix Jr. followed up the worst game of his young NFL career with his best, completing 20-of-26 passes for 313 yards and two touchdowns. The Falcons scored on each of their first three drives, set the tone early and hung on as Marcus Mariota and the Commanders fought valiantly to come back in the fourth quarter.
As a result, the Falcons enter their bye week with a 2-2 record and feeling a whole lot better about things than they did a week ago. Meanwhile, the four-time defending division champion Buccaneers lost to the Super Bowl champion Eagles and are now 3-1. So let’s open the Week 4 Overreactions column, where we sort through the weekly overreactions to try and figure out which ones might hold up and which ones are mirages, in the NFC South, shall we?
Jump to:
Is it the Falcons’ year to win NFC South?
Are the Giants cursed?
The Titans will have the No. 1 pick again?
Are Seahawks the NFC West favorite?
Will Ravens miss the playoffs?
Fantasy overreactions!
The Bucs almost orchestrated yet another late-game comeback but fell short for the first time this season. While the Falcons were racking up touchdown after touchdown in Atlanta, the Bucs were at home giving up special teams touchdowns and falling behind 24-3 to the Eagles before they got their offense going.
Tampa is insanely banged-up, with multiple starting offensive linemen and star wideout Mike Evans out with injuries. They got back left tackle Tristan Wirfs and wideout Chris Godwin for this game, which will only help moving forward. But Tampa’s 3-0 record had a skin-of-their-teeth feel to it, as they scored the go-ahead points in the last minute of each win. Could Sunday’s loss mean a regression to the mean for a Bucs team that hasn’t looked all that dominant?
Verdict: OVERREACTION
The Falcons beat the Buccaneers twice last season and still couldn’t win the division. Tampa Bay already a head-to-head win over the Falcons, having beaten them in Week 1. As promising as Penix may be, Buccaneers QB Baker Mayfield has a ton more experience winning big games and coming back late to do so. The Bucs are bound to get healthier as the season goes along, and I would like to repeat the fact that they have won this division four seasons in a row — and won the Super Bowl as a wild-card team the season before the streak started.
The Bucs have quietly been one of the league’s model franchises so far this decade. They know how to win. Atlanta is still figuring it out, plus the whole being a game back and head-to-head factors. You can’t count the Falcons out, especially if their offense continues to look like it did Sunday. But until we see it happen, the Bucs have earned the benefit of the doubt and still deserve to be considered the NFC South favorites.
What do you mean? They won their first game of the season on Sunday! They beat the previously unbeaten Chargers to do it! Rookie QB Jaxson Dart looked as exciting as we all hoped he would! Cam Skattebo!!!!! What’s there to be upset about??? Oh … right.
Star wide receiver Malik Nabers injured his knee, and it sounds like it could be the type of injury that ends his season. Dart had to leave the game with an injury, too, but he ended up coming back in, so that was some good news. But if you’re a Giants fan, I’m guessing you’re at least as upset about the Nabers injury as you are happy about the win.
Verdict: OVERREACTION
But only because I don’t believe in curses. Since the start of the 2017 season, the Giants are tied with the Jets for the most losses in the NFL. They’re on their fourth head coach since they fired Tom Coughlin at the end of the 2015 season. They’re banking on Dart, the 25th pick in this year’s draft, to be a franchise savior at quarterback, and if he’s not, they’ll probably be on to their fifth post-Coughlin head coach before long.
The Giants are down bad, folks, and I’m not trying to minimize that. And the prospect of having to watch the rest of this season without Nabers, who would be Dart’s biggest early-career asset if he were healthy, is extremely disappointing. But there’s always hope. Look around. The Lions are awesome. The Bills go to the playoffs every year. A decade ago, those things would have sounded ridiculous. Keep the faith, Giants fans. I know it’s tough, but Dart did look like fun on Sunday and the pass rush got after Justin Herbert. So maybe there’s something special to come before long.
Wow, do the Titans look bad. They lost 26-0 on Sunday to a previously winless Texans team that hadn’t done a single thing on offense in the first three weeks. Houston has a really good defense, but still, 175 total yards of offense and 10 first downs is not a representative performance from an NFL team in the 2020s. The 1920s, maybe, but not the 2020s.
Rookie quarterback Cam Ward, the top pick in the 2025 draft, shows a lot of promise but hasn’t been able to get going as his teammates have failed to come together in any meaningful way. Tennessee is 0-4 and has been outscored 120-51 so far this season. If there’s a turnaround coming, it’s going to need to announce itself soon, because September didn’t leave Titans fans with much reason for optimism.
Verdict: NOT AN OVERREACTION
Someone must pick first, and no one has looked worse than the Titans have so far. If this comes to pass, it’s entirely possible that second-year head coach Brian Callahan could be replaced and the organization could undergo major changes. The hope for the rest of this season is to show enough progress to go into 2026 feeling good about Ward as your franchise quarterback.
So if Tennessee ends up with that No. 1 pick for the second year in a row, it can use it to help build a better team around him. Or better yet, trade it to a team that wants to move up for a quarterback and obtain a bunch of picks to help spark a rebuild. There’s time for a turnaround, but if the Titans don’t have one, these are the kinds of conversations we’re going to be having about them over the second half of this season.
Seattle opened the week with a Thursday night division victory in Arizona, running its winning streak to three games in a row after opening with a tough Week 1 loss to the 49ers. The Seahawks are 3-1 and tied with the Rams and 49ers for first place in the division after the Rams toughed out a comeback victory over the Colts on Sunday and the Niners turned the ball over four times in a loss to Jacksonville. Arizona is 2-2 and in fourth place in what looks like it could be a very fun division.
Verdict: NOT AN OVERREACTION
I said before the season started, and I still believe now, that the NFC West’s four teams could finish in any order and I wouldn’t consider it a surprise. The Seahawks’ defense looks outstanding in its second season under Mike Macdonald. Entering Sunday night’s game, only the Packers and Browns were allowing fewer yards per play this season than Seattle’s 4.5. Quarterback Sam Darnold is playing well enough to make you believe last season in Minnesota wasn’t a fluke and that moving on from Geno Smith wasn’t a mistake.
The Seahawks might have been a little bit overlooked in the preseason when we discussed the NFC West, but they are clearly a team to take seriously.
Someone was going to exit this Ravens-Chiefs game 1-3. It turned out to be Baltimore … and it wasn’t even close. The Ravens were an extremely popular preseason Super Bowl favorite that now has to dig out of an early-season hole for the second year in a row.
There are nine teams in the AFC with better records than the Ravens have right now, and only seven make the playoffs. Somehow the Steelers are 3-1 and doing that thing they always do, where they run out in front of the division and make you chase them down. Oh, and did I mention that two-time MVP quarterback Lamar Jackson left Sunday’s game with a hamstring injury? Yikes.
Verdict: OVERREACTION
Kansas City looked as good on offense as it has at any point this season, but part of that has to be due to the Ravens’ defensive issues. Baltimore has allowed 37 or more points in each of its three losses and doesn’t look to have any answers on that side of the ball. And if Jackson is out for an extended period, I reserve the right to change my answer. But I’ll err on the optimistic side on that part of it, and I still just think the Ravens are too good to play like this all year.
After all, they started 0-2 last season and still won the division. The Ravens have had about as poor a September as one could have imagined, but this is still a team — assuming Jackson’s injury isn’t long-term — capable of winning eight to 10 in a row and righting the ship. It’s too soon to write off a roster this talented.
Woody Marks, not Nick Chubb, is the Houston RB you want in fantasy: NOT AN OVERREACTION. The Texans have no idea when or if Joe Mixon will play for them this year, and an offense that’s been looking for any kind of spark just got a big game on Sunday from the rookie Marks. No reason not to keep rolling with him.
A.J. Brown fantasy managers should sell now and take what they can get: OVERREACTION. Trade now? Never. There are a lot of flustered fantasy managers given where Brown was drafted, but those who want out should wait until after his next big game or two.
Ladd McConkey is no longer a fantasy starter: OVERREACTION. The Chargers are still throwing it a ton, and defenses will start taking Quentin Johnston seriously at some point. Hang tight. You know Herbert trusts McConkey.
Bucky Irving will be the No. 1 pick in next year’s fantasy drafts: NOT AN OVERREACTION. James Cook, Jonathan Taylor and some others are off to starts that make you think they’ll have something to say about this, but Irving is a prolific runner/receiver back in a great offense that should keep being great. If you went WR early and got Irving as your RB1 this year, you’re loving it.