After years of losing, Falcons finally will make playoffs in 2025 season

The Falcons play in a league that gives losers every opportunity to quickly become winners. They belong to a division that’s been the NFC’s worst for four consecutive years. The Falcons still have stubbornly refused to stumble into the postseason at least once over the past seven years.

The Jaguars have done better with an absentee owner who thought it was a good idea to put Urban Meyer in charge. Not even Shahid Khan is paying a quarterback $27.5 million to hold a clipboard. That unprecedented mark of ineptitude belongs to Arthur Blank, who is very much involved with his team.

I’m doing it, anyway. This is the season when the Falcons will end their playoff drought. They will at least be good enough to win the NFC South, which is all it takes.

Optimistic forecasts for the Falcons come with a heavy burden to explain why things will be different this time. For me, it comes down to some of the things that will be new.

There’s a different starting quarterback for Game 1, Michael Penix Jr. He has the necessary talent, confidence and nerve to play the hardest position in pro sports. There’s a new approach to defense. The Falcons are going to be younger in that group, with the loss of experience offset by gains in speed and spirit.

Add the schedule to the list of reasons to be positive about the Falcons. It doesn’t look difficult, with the usual caveat that every week is hard in a league engineered for parity.

Soft schedules haven’t helped the Falcons recently. But it’s easy to forget that they were the class of the South during their 6-3 start in 2024. They twice beat Tampa Bay, the eventual division champs.

That happened with Kirk Cousins not able to move well enough for the offense to function normally. Cousins’ shoulder injury started the team’s downfall. Morris accelerated the demise with mistakes in managing his QBs and the game clock in Washington.

Now, Penix is the unquestioned starter. It’s reasonable to think he’ll be better than a diminished version of Cousins. It certainly will expand Zac Robinson’s playbook. Look for more frequent use of the outside zone runs that Morris calls the “bread and butter” of the offense (the 2016 Falcons set records with those plays as the base).

Falcons coaches spent much of training camp urging Penix to curb his aggressive tendencies. That was the right idea. Penix has supreme confidence in his ability to fit passes in tight spaces. Having a young quarterback who needs to dial it back is a better problem than having one whose arm is not good enough for them to crank it up when needed.

There’s a similar spirit with the Falcons’ defense. The youth among that group means that mistakes are inevitable. Falcons coaches have encouraged those players to go full speed while force-feeding them practice reps in different roles and situations.

“I think that was just the common goal, the common thing of getting some of our young guys out there to play so we can play faster, we can be better, we can grow together, we can get these guys going,” Morris said. “I think this is the appropriate year to do those things. We had a more veteran-laced team last year, and we had more veteran-laced guys out there to be able to play for us.

“Some of those guys did some amazing things for us. … But we’ve kind of moved on to some of the younger values and some of the young core things that we want to do and some of our core beliefs.”

The Falcons will rely on young players to help pressure quarterbacks up front and create turnover chances in the back. Rookie first-round picks Jalon Walker and James Pearce Jr. will have big roles as pass rushers. Rookie ball hawks Xavier Watts and Billy Bowman Jr., are expected to start in the secondary.

Morris said the Falcons won’t water down game plans to accommodate the young players.