The Atlanta Falcons (4-2) picked up their third-straight win on Sunday with its 38-20 win over the Carolina Panthers (1-5). With the win, they moved to the top of the NFC South standings and have provided enough of a sample size to evaluate the performance of the team.
"They are we thought they were," Steak Shapiro said on Monday morning about the Falcons' performance to this point in the season. "Now you're starting to see that sometimes when your GM, in the offseason, goes out to get Kirk Cousins, drafts really well with Tyler Allgeier a few years ago and Bijan Robinson, gets [Darnell] Mooney, lets Drake London have a quarterback who can get him the ball. You're starting to see that this offense is a juggernaut."
First with the good: the offense has found its groove with consecutive showings of 36 or more points and 400 or more total yards. Kirk Cousins has been effective and he's finding his weapons on the outside. The rushing attack has been the two-headed monster that fans hoped it would be.
Then with the bad: the pass rush is abysmal and will eventually cost this team. They find themselves in familiar territory after six weeks -- dead last in the NFL with just five sacks. Against one of the worst pass-pro teams in the League on Sunday, they failed to register a single sack.
"We also know that when we didn't draft a defensive lineman to rush the quarterback in the offseason at eight, we said we're still going to be struggling," he said. "We have nobody to get after the quarterback, even though we thought Judon would be the guy."
A positive about this defense is that the secondary has been tremendous. Jessie Bates and Justin Simmons have been everything advertised as the best safety duo in the NFL while AJ Terrell and the cornerbacks have held their end of the bargain. Of teams who have played six games, the Falcons have the fifth-best defense in yards allowed through the air.
The early sample size tells us that this team is that, for better or for worse, the Falcons are exactly who we thought they would be.
