About 24 hours ago, I was worried about the Falcons playing in three straight island games. So much for that. Atlanta rolled over the Packers on Thursday Night Football 35-14 in Week 3, and gave us some fantasy football good news in the process. Here are the team takeaways.
Penix completed 18-of-25 passes for 256 yards and a touchdown. He had one interception and he wasn’t sacked. Best of all, Penix got the ball to Drake London (9-194-0, 10 target), a welcome development after two washout games.
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Penix has now made 13 starts (and played 15 games overall) as a pro. London’s been productive in those games: 89-1,341-8. Looks like London can return his ADP, after all. But Kyle Pitts Sr. is another story. Pitts had just one piddly five-yard catch last night, and his career with Penix has been middling: 44-428-2.
There’s no fresh reveal to Bijan Robinson‘s 213 total yards and two scores, he’s just a rare, generational talent. Jahmyr Gibbs was the consensus No. 1 pick most of the summer for good reason, but Robinson could easily wind up outscoring every back this year. Penix is good for Robinson, merely because it helps Atlanta sustain more offense; the buoyancy effect. But Robinson would be great anywhere.
The next three games for Atlanta could be fun: at New Orleans, Baltimore and Chicago. LFG.
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Green Bay didn’t run the ball well early against Atlanta and it quickly gave up trying. MarShawn Lloyd had four carries for 11 yards, and Kaleb Johnson had four rushes for six yards. Nothing to see here.
Jordan Love had an empty calories sort of night: he threw for 312 yards and two touchdowns (one pick), but needed 53 attempts to get there. That hashes out to a mediocre 5.9 YPA. The Packers trailed by multiple scores for the entire second half, which is how Love wound up with so much volume.
His main wideouts didn’t mind the game script: Matthew Golden (5-100-1, 12 targets) and Christian Watson (7-96-1, 10 targets) were both smashes. But we’re still waiting for Tucker Kraft to launch (4-26-0, eight targets). Keep in mind his knee blowout was less than a year ago.
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Green Bay’s unbalanced offense might continue for a while. The Falcons rolled to 25 first downs and 498 yards of offense against the messy Packers defense. The Green Bay offensive line is one of the worst in the league. This could push Love into fantasy relevance all year, and Watson and Golden are proactive starts. I’m not sure when Kraft will be 100% (he doesn’t look it right now), but he should join the party, too. And the distribution becomes tighter with Jayden Reed out indefinitely.
It’s also likely that Josh Jacobs will return at some point, but he could struggle behind the poor blocking here. As for Lloyd and Johnson, they might be fantasy drops at this point. At least the Green Bay schedule is reasonable coming up: at Buccaneers, Bears, Cowboys, at Lions. Points will be scored.
