Atlanta’s once again expected to be an interesting football team, and the national spotlight will shine brightly.
For a while there, the Atlanta Falcons were not a primetime team. They had none in 2023, just one in each of 2022 and 2021, and two each year in 2020 and 2019. The sense that the Falcons were not just a mediocre team, but a particularly unexciting one, clearly was at the front of every mind on the NFL’s schedule making squad.
Those days are over. The Falcons landed a few primetime games last year with Kirk Cousins in the fold, and now they have five in 2025. You can likely thank Michael Penix, the team’s high-flying supporting cast on offense, and a suddenly interesting defense for that, perhaps, but there’s clearly a different view of Atlanta now. That heightened interest—perhaps those heightened expectations, too—come with the possibility of impressing a wider audience or falling flat in front of the eyes of the nation. The Falcons have to embrace the chance and do something with it.
They’ll be in primetime early, against a tough Minnesota Vikings team hoping to start their own new quarterback era with J.J. McCarthy. They’ll be in primetime in back-to-back weeks, at home against the Buffalo Bills on Monday Night Football in Week 6 and on the road against a retooling San Francisco 49ers team on Sunday Night Football in Week 7. They’ll be taking on a divisional foe late when they travel to face the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in Week 15, and they’ll be close to closing out the season at home against the same Los Angeles Rams team Raheem Morris coached for in Week 17. Intrigue abounds in those matchups, and they’re all against teams that have been among the better squads in the NFL in recent years. The Falcons are, again, being taken seriously. There’s even an international game against the Colts, which is early morning instead of primetime but will certainly reach a larger audience.
Your belief that they should be may vary, but it’s no small deal that the league is indicating Atlanta will be worth watching. I’m inclined to agree with that evaluation, as the Falcons have enough talent and personality to be interesting and lively even if they’re not good. The bedrock hope is that all these primetime games turn into wins, and those wins in turn fuel not just further primetime games but the winning season we have long awaited.