The Falcons can continue throwing dirt on the Saints’ season.
The Atlanta Falcons are playing their best football in over half a decade, and they are enjoying their best results in that time span as well. The Week 7 defeat against Seattle has proven to be a hiccup, as the Falcons have won five of their last six games, a run which started with a home victory against the New Orleans Saints in Week 4.
These same Saints went into that matchup with a better record than Atlanta, riding high off of back to back wins to open the season. A Week 2 drubbing of the Cowboys has proven to be the highlight of their campaign, as a free fall of seven consecutive defeats has commenced since. They fired head coach Dennis Allen after the latest failure against Carolina.
Atlanta and New Orleans once again renew a Southeastern blood feud, in a rare season where the Birds come into the matchup absolutely rolling while their rivals from the Bayou are sputtering.
Let’s take a look at the circumstances surrounding the Falcons if they beat the Saints in Week 10, as well as looking at the scenario if they lose.
If the Falcons win
This will be their best 10-game start to a season since they were 9-1 to begin the 2012 campaign, which ended in a 13-3 record and the top seed in the NFC. This will also be their first sweep of the Saints since the 2016, when Atlanta won 11 games and reached the Super Bowl.
Victory will continue to put immense pressure on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who will fall to a full 3.0 games behind the Birds if they lose to the San Francisco 49ers this weekend. Really, it will be more like 3.5 games, as Atlanta has solidified the tiebreaker over the Bucs as well.
Any hope of New Orleans putting together some magic and possibly making a run at the division utilizing the new head coach bounce will essentially be put to rest. The Falcons will open up a 5.0 game lead against them and along with the tiebreaker, meaning the Saints would need to make up six full games with just seven left to play. They will also suffer their eighth consecutive defeat, two of which will have come against Atlanta.
Looking at the conference as a whole, the Falcons can move up to the 2-seed if the Commanders lose to Pittsburgh and the Eagles lose to Dallas. At worst, Atlanta will solidify their placement in the 3-seed, being one game back.
If the Falcons lose
Their momentum will be halted, and all of the good they did recently will quickly fall to the wayside due to the terrible taste in our mouths suffered from losing to the Saints and going an eighth consecutive season without sweeping their main rivals.
The Bucs can claw back to within one full game (without the tiebreaker) in the division with a victory against San Francisco, which will signal that this division race is still going to be a dogfight going down the stretch. While the Saints’ division chances remain improbable, their burial and funeral will be delayed.
Atlanta will possibly fall another full game back of the 2-seed, and could fall into a tie for the 3-seed with the Arizona Cardinals, provided they beat the Jets this weekend. The Falcons would keep hold of that higher spot due to a superior conference record tiebreaker over Arizona.
The Saints will once again re-tie the all time series, at 56 wins apiece. This will be the third time they will have initiated a tie in as many years, as they will once again threaten to take the all time head to head lead over Atlanta in the first meeting next season. They continue looking for their first lead since it was 1-0, in 1967.