The Win Column: Please rank Atlanta’s sports teams

Hey, y’all.

This week we’re inviting you (yeah, you!) to weigh in on the direction of every Atlanta sports franchise.

I’ll explain more shortly — but feel free to get a head start.

GET YOUR VOTES IN NOW

Clockwise, from top left: Atlanta Dream star Allisha Gray, current and former Atlanta United manager Tata Martino, the Hawks' Jalen Johnson, new Braves manager Walt Weiss and Falcons quarterback Michael Penix Jr.

The sports world is chaotic right now.

Gambling scandals across the board. Pretty much everyone’s injured. A new college football debate (questionable playoff seeding. NIL. Lane Kiffin!) just about every day. Collective bargaining negotiations are roiling the WNBA, and possibly looming on MLB’s horizon.

Heck, Kirk Cousins is the Falcons’ starting quarterback again.

Which, besides being reasonably depressing, is a carefully orchestrated segue to today’s big question:

How happy are you, the fan, with Atlanta’s pro sports teams?

• The Braves have a new manager (more fiery, but familiar) and a whole offseason to plug some holes. How confident are you that they’ll do it appropriately?
• Premature playoff exit or not, do you believe in the Dream’s dramatic turnaround?
• The Falcons, uh … well, Michael Penix is having season-ending surgery.
• With a new GM, a blossoming young core and key offseason editions, are the Hawks — the Hawks! — suddenly the city’s best team?
• Atlanta United’s leaning into the glory days, hoping old friend Tata Martino can help it regain respectability. But can he do it with the same pricey underperformers that fueled the worst campaign in franchise history?

Here’s the fun part: Today, those aren’t rhetorical questions. In a general sense, at least.

I’ve constructed a fun, quick little survey that you’re all invited — nay, encouraged — to fill out. It involves ranking Atlanta’s pro franchises in order of Positive Vibes Emittance™, plus giving each team an individual grade between 1 and 5.

I’ll leave the voting open until the week after Thanksgiving, then round up the responses to get a real good pulse of where fandom stands in our fair city.

Do it up! And don’t be afraid to share with a friend.

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WHAT TO WATCH THIS WEEK(END)

A little more on each of these later in the newsletter, but here’s a quick look at the local slate this weekend and beyond.

🏆 High school football playoffs continue with second-round action. We’ve got everything you need to know about the matchups in Class 6A, 5A, 4A and 3A, with more to come at AJC.com/varsity. (Some teams will travel more than 300 miles for their games, which is wild.)

• Also: Too many ties to list names here just yet, but congrats to everyone sitting atop the leader boards in the AJC Varsity Playoff Challenge after Round 1.

💪 The Hawks look to keep things rolling without Trae Young when they visit Wemby-less San Antonio at 8 p.m. Thursday and no-good New Orleans at 7 p.m. Saturday. Next home game: 6 p.m. Sunday against Charlotte.

👀 Georgia Tech football hosts No. 22 Pitt for Senior Night — and a game with massive postseason implications — at 7 p.m. Saturday on ESPN. Pitt scores an ACC-leading 37.2 points per game, so that Yellow Jacket defense will need to step up big time after a couple rough outings.

🧁 Georgia football looks to beat up on American Athletic Conference cellar dweller Charlotte at 12:45 p.m. Saturday. Watch on SEC Network.

🤢 The Falcons visit the 2-8 Saints on Sunday for a matchup that should feel a lot like the first few decades of the rivalry’s existence (derogatory). Kickoff arrives at 4:25 p.m. on Fox.

IT’S WORSE THAN YOU THOUGHT, TBH

Kirk Cousins: expensive backup turned ineffective starter?

Michael Penix Jr.’s partially torn ACL has turned a miserable Falcons campaign into a lost one. No playoffs, sure — but no more development, no more learning exactly what you’ve got under center (or, uh, in the pistol).

But wait, that’s not all. The injury and effective end of Atlanta’s season also come with all these bonus ramifications:

• As our friend Ken Sugiura wrote earlier this week, Kirk Cousins’ recent performances don’t inspire a whole lot of confidence. (Particularly in the arm strength department, which some people deem quite important for a quarterback.)
• Remember that 2026 first-round draft pick the Falcons traded to the Rams to move up and get James Pearce Jr.? Keep losing and that’s bound to be a top-10 selection.
• Drop another game against the lowly Saints on Sunday and Atlanta’s tied with them at the bottom of the NFC South.

And here’s the worst-case scenario currently haunting my dreams: Penix’s recovery lingers. The Falcons enter next season with one broken quarterback, another quarterback that can’t get it done (or will cost somewhere around $35 million in dead cap space to cut) … and a mystery third guy who may actually have to do the playing. For cheap.

Ain’t it fun being a Falcons fan?

Make sure to sign up for the weekly Dirty Birds Dispatch, if you haven’t already. Misery loves company.

FAST BREAK OR BUST

A chart comparing fast break points and final scores for the Hawks during star guard Trae Young's absence.

A while back, I asked Hawks beat reporter Lauren Williams what to expect from the team during Trae Young’s absence. Among other things, she said “wreaking havoc in transition will be their biggest strength.”

Unsurprisingly, she was correct.

Data Man Rahul crunched the fast-break numbers (and made the lovely chart you see above). The stats are even starker than expected:

• The Hawks are 9-0 this season when scoring more fast break points than their opponent. They’re 0-6 when they don’t.
• In Young’s absence, Atlanta’s average total of fastbreak points jumped from 15.4 to 19.9.
• In the team’s seven Trae-less wins? That number’s more like 24.
• Overall, the Hawks’ 18.4 fastbreak points per game rank fourth in the NBA.

I love it when we’re right. (More on who’s stepping up here.)

HOW TO MAKE A CONFERENCE TITLE GAME

Do college football conference championship games still matter in the playoff era? Frances McDormand in “Fargo” voice: You betcha.

Is tracking a team’s path to said games more confusing than ever, thanks to massive conferences with no divisions? Double you betcha.

Let us be your guide to what the locals need to happen to … make it happen.

🐝 Georgia Tech: Beating Pitt on Saturday sends the Jackets to Charlotte, plain and simple. There’s still a path if they lose, but it’s a tad more tenuous. Via beat writer Chad Bishop:

• Tech would need Pitt to beat Miami in the regular-season finale, Virginia to finish 6-2 with a loss to Virginia Tech and SMU to be either 6-2 or 5-3.
• In that scenario, Pitt would clinch a berth and Tech would finish above Virginia and SMU based on its record versus common conference opponents all played equal times.
• The same tiebreakers would apply if SMU beats Louisville this weekend but loses to Cal in the season finale.

🐶 Georgia: The Bulldogs and their lone loss to Alabama are done with SEC play, meaning they need a little help to make a return trip to the Benz on Dec. 6. Here are the simplest ways Georgia gets in, per DawgNation’s Connor Riley:

• Unbeaten Texas A&M loses to Texas on Nov. 28.
• Alabama loses to Auburn on Nov. 28.

If only one of those teams loses, Georgia would play the other in the title game. If both lose and Ole Miss beats Mississippi State, the Bulldogs and Rebels would square up for a rematch.

THREE RANDOM THINGS

1️⃣ The Win Column officially has a secondary, non-U.S.A. rooting interest for next summer’s World Cup, y’all: Curacao. The island that gave the Braves future Hall of Famer Andruw Jones, Ozzie Albies and several other stars just became the smallest country to ever qualify for the world’s biggest soccer tourney.

2️⃣ Reporter Alexis Stevens recently caught up with Nigel Talton, the Braves’ original fan-racing phenomenon. They call him Coach Freeze these days.

3️⃣ Got friends coming in town for a game? Hotel Phoenix — that shiny new building on the fringe of Centennial Yards, across the street from State Farm Arena and Mercedes-Benz Stadium — is set to finally open next month.

PHOTO OF THE DAY

Kennesaw State basketball fans watch a recent game in fruit-based get-ups.