By The Numbers: Falcons Dissapointing First Half of Season

It’s the Atlanta Falcons’ bye week. For the team, it’s a much-needed break from a tough first half of the 2023 season.

Here, it’s time to look at where the Falcons have been so far this season. At 6 and 4, the season has been a disappointment. But what do the numbers from the past games this season tell us about their season and how close some of these Falcon losses came to wins?

The biggest win the team had (at least by score) was the season opener at home against the Carolina Panthers. That game produced the team’s biggest victory, at 14 points. That’s the most so far the Falcons have scored over their opponents and it’s the only time they scored double-digit numbers this season. So by that point alone, it is apparent the Dirty Birds haven’t exactly been crushing their competition.

The three other victories, against the Packers, Texans, and Buccaneers, were no higher than 3 points. In all three of those games, it was Younghoe Koo who made the difference, kicking the game-winning field goal in the final seconds of the game.

The team’s losses are just as telling. The Lions and Jaguars losses were obvious, but the remaining four losses were close enough at 2 to 8 points below the winner, that a positive play or an error (turnover, pick-six, penalty) that wasn’t made by the Falcons could have resulted in a score that could have been a close win instead of a close loss. That’s particularly true of the last two close games which were riddled with Falcon penalties and missed plays that hurt the Falcons’ chance to score.

Three points may not mean much, as a touchdown is always better than a field goal, but in close games, they could have made the difference between the Falcons being 6-4 or what they are now, 4-6.

Finally, the Falcons so far are running behind the combined average scores of the ten competitors in the first half of the season, a 21.7 average competitor score to the Falcons 18.9, a difference of 2.8.

Here’s a review of the past half-season’s scores and the differences from their opponent’s scores.