If you circled one single game as a loss on this year’s schedule, it was probably this one. The Kansas City Chiefs are slow starters, the Atlanta Falcons are at home, yadda yadda. This is still the defending Super Bowl champion, coached by one of the best coaches of all-time, and quarterbacked by perhaps the best quarterback of all-time. There’s nothing easy about this matchup.
All that said, a little hope goes a long way, and the Falcons gave us that with their primetime victory over the Eagles. Clamping down enough to hold Philadelphia to 21 points on the night while engineering a tremendous last-minute scoring drive to take the lead, Kirk Cousins kicked that “he can’t get it done under the brights light” narrative right in the head and the Falcons moved to 1-1 with a brilliant victory that seemed to open a whole hallway of doors for this team.