Four Verts: Falcons’ late-season collapse isn’t surprising, and how dangerous are the Seahawks?

The postseason is rapidly approaching, clearing up the image as far as teams that have a shot to make the playoffs over the final month of the season. This week’s Four Verts starts with a team that has, perhaps unsurprisingly, rapidly fallen down the standings after a month-long skid.

Falcons blowing the divisional race is peak Falcons

Of course. It was never going to be easy. After a 6-3 start with a chokehold on the NFC South, the Falcons’ season came to a screeching halt with a four-game losing streak that has them at 6-7 and, currently, out of the playoff picture. Calamity sticks to this team like an illness and its latest bout with its disease ended with 21 fourth-quarter points for the Minnesota Vikings in a 42-21 loss on the road. The investment in Kirk Cousins quickly went from being a great move that stabilized the franchise to a disaster that already has his future with the team in doubt.

Nothing is really working with this team right now. The Falcons’ offensive efficiency isn’t where it was when they were winning games earlier in the season, they stink in the red zone and the defense is, well, still a Falcons defense. Atlanta is capable of, outside of the Broncos game, putting together long stretches of competency. They move the ball well in between the 20s and have a good offensive line paired with a very good running back duo in Bijan Robinson and Tyler Allgeier. The framework of a good team is here, but the substance isn’t. As the season has gone on, Cousins’ lack of mobility has become a huge strain on an offense that feels like it’s starting to run out of answers.

The Falcons don’t really have anything in their call sheet that can stress a defense, despite having one of the best rushing games in the league. According to TruMedia, they run the least amount of play-action in the league (7.9%) and have scrambled on 0.4% of their dropbacks this season, good for 31st. Their passing game solely consists of Cousins dropping back and firing into the defense while his feet are glued to the pocket. An offense that can’t move the quarterback is going to be only so tough to defend for so long, unless they’re like Tom Brady or Peyton Manning. Cousins has turned into a turnover machine as the margins get smaller.

Now that Atlanta is on the outside looking in at the playoffs, the future of the franchise is undoubtedly going to become a topic. The Falcons made a controversial move to draft University of Washington quarterback Michael Penix Jr. with the eighth pick in April, and they were ready to bench him for multiple seasons if the situation allowed. Well, that likely won’t be the case if Cousins is the main reason why they tank the end of the season and miss the playoffs.

It hasn’t been all bad, but there was no way the 6-3 Falcons were going to leave the season unscathed. As usual, they stumbled and fell on their face and now have to fight for their lives to save the season. In some ways this is why Cousins was, spiritually, the perfect quarterback to take over the Falcons. Just enough to keep people intrigued and roped in, but ultimately not quite what people need.

The Bears had 4 yards of offense in a half

At some point, the Bears will stop being a punch line in this column. Today is not that day.

The latest Bears blunder occurred in Thomas Brown’s first game as the interim head coach during their 38-13 loss to the 49ers. Brown’s rapid ascent from passing game coordinator to offensive coordinator to interim head coach may have been a bit too much too early, but there’s no excuse for what the Bears “did” in the first half against the 49ers.

Four yards. Four yards is all the Bears could manage in two whole quarters of football. They had 2 yards on 14 plays (0.1 yards per play) going into their final drive. They gained 8 yards on the first two plays of their final drive before Caleb Williams was sacked for a loss on third down. Four yards. In 30 minutes of football! That’s 0.2 yards per play, -0.3 net yards per passing attempt, 0% rushing success rate, 30.8% sack rate and 0% on third down all in the first half. According to NFL’s Next Gen Stats, the Bears’ 4 yards in the first half were the fewest of any team since the 2000 season. They were also outgained by 315 yards in the first half, also the worst since 2000. Yikes!

The score was 24-0, yet somehow felt significantly worse than that. They had no chance through a slew of miscues and sloppy play that had this game feeling over before the first quarter was done. This team doesn’t feel like it should be this bad, but it is, putting the Bears in a perilous state as this season, thankfully, comes to a close. The Bears were a play away from being 5-2 before the infamous Hail Mary attempt in Washington, but now sit at 4-9 with a new coaching staff guaranteed to walk through the door. That’s unfortunate for Brown, who has had some nice moments as a play-caller in the NFL, but the game is the game.

Oh, well. Maybe next year. At least start to look competent before the end of the season, because they have the pieces to do it. Or maybe they don’t and this is what the Bears are always doomed to be.

OK. Let me start off by saying this: I am not sick of Kansas City. I really enjoy the NFL having a team and quarterback of this high caliber that’s always a pillar of league-wide relevance. I’m not bothered by them being 12-1, or the possibility of them representing the AFC in the Super Bowl again. Dominance can be captivating, especially when it’s quarterbacked by Patrick Mahomes. However, there needs to be a discussion about what the hell is happening at the end of some of these recent games — the future of the universe may be at stake.

When the Chiefs beat the Broncos on a blocked field goal, it was easy to chalk that up to “same old Chiefs.” Luck plays a huge role in winning, so even teams that we know are great are going to have their fair sure of lucky moments. It happens. It takes luck to win all of these one-score games, and this was just another moment like that.

Then, the Black Friday game against the Raiders. The Chiefs were in a dogfight against one of the worst teams in the league, Brock Bowers looked like the next Tony Gonzalez and the Raiders had a chance to win at the end of the game. As the Raiders were positioning themselves into field goal range, they kind of just forgot how to operate as a real offense and wound up fumbling the ball and ending the game without getting a chance to kick. OK, that’s a little weird — but it’s the Raiders, right? They do dumb things all the time, and perhaps the Chiefs just got lucky with a terribly incompetent opponent.

However, what happened against the Chargers can only be described as divine intervention. A doink on the last play of the game to win? A doink to win? Now we need to investigate, because that was a bridge too far. It’s becoming clearer and clearer that the Chiefs have sold all remnants of their soul to a demonic power — and potentially sacrificed the rest of the world to do it.

Sure, you could point to having Mahomes or high ratings in several offensive stats to explain the record up to this point, but it doesn’t explain those specific endings. Only unseen forces can allow all of these to happen in such a short manner. Now is a good time to make sure you’re right with whatever higher or lower power you believe in, just in case the rapture does start in New Orleans following the upcoming Super Bowl. You’ve been warned. Don’t be unprepared for the beginning of the end.

Seattle’s defense is raising their potential ceiling for the playoffs

The Seahawks have had a nice turnaround in the middle of the season, currently boasting an 8-5 record after a 4-5 start. For the most part this season, quarterback Geno Smith has done a lot of the heavy lifting, buoying a team with an inconsistent offensive line and defense game after game. Recently, it’s become more of a group effort as new head coach Mike Macdonald’s defense finally starts to take form and look like the unit everyone was hoping for when he arrived in Seattle this offseason. With the recent performance of the defense, the Seahawks have been able to take control of the NFC West and look like a team that would be a pain in the ass to play in January.

The beginning of the season makes the last month of play all the more impressive. The Seahawks, like the Ravens at the beginning of Macdonald’s tenure in Baltimore, struggled to play effective defense on a down-to-down basis. They were just about a middle-of-the-pack defense. According to TruMedia, the Seahawks defense ranked 18th in expected points added per play (-0.02), 22nd in success rate (42.3%), 14th in points per drive (1.91) and 17th in third down conversion rate (37.4%) in the nine games prior to their Week 10 bye.

Seattle made a great in-season trade for linebacker Ernest Jones that helped shore up their front seven and since their bye, they’ve been one of the best defenses in football. Since Week 11, the Seahawks rank second in points per drive (1.31), third in net yards per passing attempt (5.6), first in expected points added per play (-0.16), sixth in success rate (39.9%) and fifth in yards per play (5.0). In that span, they played the 49ers, the Cardinals twice and the Jets. The Jets may not be the cream of the crop on offense this year, but the 49ers and Cardinals have been good offensive units.

The Seahawks’ four-game win streak that has them on top of the division wouldn’t be possible without this defensive turnaround. The offense has essentially been fluttering between average and above average season, but Smith’s performance gives them a high floor on that side of the ball. If the defense can keep playing like this, Seattle may be able to get into a home game for the wild card and then, who knows what can happen?

This is an exciting development for the Seahawks and their fan base. This unit was one of the worst in the league a year ago and have already ascended toward being a sturdy one in just one season with Macdonald. He’s doing what he was brought and advertised to do, giving the Seahawks an incredibly bright immediate future. Their performance to close the season, and potentially in January, will give a lot of insight as to where their future lies in the new era.