The Atlanta Falcons' relentless ground game led by Bijan Robinson exposed a folding defense, leaving the Green Bay Packers searching for answers after a humiliating, one-sided primetime collapse.
Football is a game of momentum. It's funny in that sometimes the other team has it and there's just nothing you can do to take it away. It's a turd rolling downhill, and you're at the bottom just watching it head your way.
That's what it felt like when the Green Bay Packers welcomed in the Atlanta Falcons for Thursday Night Football in Week 3. The end result was an embarrassing 35-14 loss in primetime, in which the Packers seemingly had no answers.
On its own, it was one of the worst losses of the Matt LaFleur era, if not the worst, but it's also part of a larger trend that has become incredibly worrisome. This goes all the way back to losing Micah Parsons in Week 15 of last season.
This team seemingly loses its composure when things go wrong, time after time. They didn't win a single game when Parsons was lost with a torn ACL last season, and they've developed a nasty trend of folding when the pressure is at its highest.
At least in this game, they didn't roll over an collapse while giving up a lead, because they never really even got close to being in the driver's seat.
Atlanta dominated the Packers whistle to whistle. The Falcons won the time-of-possession battle, 37:05 to 22:55 and put up 242 rushing yards on Green Bay's defense while the Packers were barely able to muster 17 rushing yards of their own.
It was an old-fashioned butt-kicking, and the Packers were booed mercilessly by their own fans for much of it.
Sadly, they deserved it.
We'll try to find some good in this one, but it was mostly bad and ugly.
The Good:
This is going to be a short section, but let's give wideout Matthew Golden his flowers for catching his first regular-season touchdown pass. Golden is going to be just fine in this league.
In fact, he looks every bit a solid WR2 at this juncture. He caught five passes for 100 yards and the aforementioned touchdown.
The Bad:
Green Bay's defense, which had some nice moments over the first two weeks of play, looked almost useless against the Falcons, and the Packers were useless against the run.
As mentioned, the Packers gave up 242 rushing yards on the ground, and 194 of those yards belonged to Bijan Robinson, who the Packers just could not tackle. He averaged a whopping 6.7 yards per rush and found the endzone two times.
The Packers also had no answers for big wide receiver Drake London and the deep ball. London caught nine passes for 194 yards, averaging 21.6 yards per catch. He made both Brandon Cisse and Keisean Nixon look silly.
Keep in mind, this was quarterback Michael Penix Jr's first game back since tearing his ACL last season. He looked like an established veteran who never once was injured in his career against the Pack.
Penix completed 18-of-25 yards for 256 yards, one touchdown and one interception. After that early interception by Xavier McKinney, he settled in nicely and the Packers got next to no pressure on him.
In general, the Packers' defense simply couldn't get off the field, and they looked like they gave up at halftime.
The Ugly:
Green Bay Packers quarterback Jordan Love (10) passes the ball under pressure from Atlanta Falcons defensive end Cameron Thomas (99) on Thursday, Sept. 24, 2026, at Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The Falcons won the game, 35-14. Tork Mason/Green Bay Press-Gazette.At this point, the Pack could pull five strangers off the street and do a better job fielding a competent offensive line.
There are more problem with the offense than just the five guys up front, but the offensive line is the main problem. They were also exposed as being almost completely useless by a Falcons defense that was missing two of its top pass-rushers in Jalon Walker and James Pierce Jr.
Heck, the Falcons brought Za'Darius Smith out of retirement because they had so few options to get after the quarterback.
You would have never known they were lacking against this Packers offensive line. In fact, the Falcons' defense looked like world beaters.
Quarterback Jordan Love was sacked just once, but the Falcons got all kinds of pressure on him despite minimal blitzing. Love was hit 12 times and he dropped back to pass 53 times while LaFleur called just eight run plays for the in-over-their-heads duo of MarShawn Lloyd and Kaleb Johnson.
You can't even blame Lloyd and Johnson, though, because this offensive line is just as bad at run blocking as it is at pass blocking. LaFleur didn't call any runs because there's nothing this team can really execute on the ground.
A 242 to 17 rushing disparity is ugly no matter how you try to explain it away, and the Packers have a lot of explaining to do.
They're now 1-2 and look like one of the worst teams in the league at this juncture in the 2026 season.
