Dirty Birds Dispatch: A whirlwind week in Falcons land

FLOWERY BRANCH — Falcons coach Kevin Stefanski started his team meeting Wednesday by addressing, as cornerback Mike Hughes called it, “the elephant in the room.” So we will, too.

Jessie Bates III is gone. Yes, the three-time All-Pro, the team’s best defensive player and one of the best safeties of this generation. Ryan Neuzil is gone, too. Yes, the man who’s started 26 consecutive games at center.

Bates drew a lofty return. The Falcons netted a 2027 second-round pick and a 2028 fifth-round choice. Neuzil brought back a reserve guard in Andrew Vorhees and a 2028 conditional sixth-round draft pick.

• Sugiura: Tanking or not, trades will change things
• Falcons still in thick of division race

Nick Folk is also gone. That may draw different reactions than the above two. The team released its 42-year-old kicker Tuesday, ending a nine-game tenure in which Folk went 13-for-18 on field goals, a stark contrast from the player who led the NFL in field-goal percentage each of the past three years.

The elephant may now exit stage left.

“We’re all human, so we all have emotions,” quarterback Michael Penix Jr. said of the moves. “We’re gonna miss those guys. But, at the same time, this is the business that we’re in, and I feel like everybody understands that. We wish nothing but the best for those guys.”

Wait — bring the elephant back. There’s another to discuss.

“I know the external people outside of here think we’re just plumbing the season,” star running back Bijan Robinson said.

The Falcons disagree with that perception.

“Like, no, man,” Robinson said. “We’re focused on this week, and we’re going to take it one game at a time and go from there. We’re all confident in ourselves.”

Added Stefanski: “In no way, shape or form would we punt on this season.”

• Falcons still believe in themselves
• Weekend predictions: A favorable spread vs. Chiefs

After a 34-17 loss to the Cincinnati Bengals on Sunday in Madrid, the Falcons (3-6) have lost four of their last five games. And yet … because of the NFC South, they’re still “very much in the thick” of the division title race, Stefanski noted.

No team in the division has more than three wins. The Falcons are a half-game out of first place. Crazy, right?

Let’s catch up on life in Flowery Branch before the Kansas City Chiefs (6-2) arrive in Atlanta for a 1 p.m. Sunday kickoff inside Mercedes-Benz Stadium.

Keeping up with the Jones- … er, roster moves

Let’s keep this short. A look at why the Falcons made their moves, courtesy of Stefanski.

• Trading Bates: “This is football, where sometimes you have one foot in the short term, one foot in the long term. And there’s things like this that make your team better in the long run. Draft picks are the lifeblood of an organization.”
• Trading Neuzil: “Obviously love ‘Neuz’. Great person. Just felt like this was an opportunity for our football team and comfortable and feel good about Corey Levin stepping in.”
• Releasing Folk: “Nick Folk is an outstanding human being. The best. I’ve enjoyed being around him. I’ve enjoyed just picking his brain on football, but just felt like this was the best thing for our football team in this moment.”

Meet the (sort of) new faces

1️⃣ The Falcons will start Levin at center moving forward. Since entering the league in 2017, Levin has played in 97 games but made only seven starts. He’s largely been a special-teams player and backup interior offensive lineman. He’s played 14 offensive snaps this season in jumbo packages.

“Corey’s been here with us since the spring,” Stefanski said. “I feel really good about his understanding of everything we’re doing.”

• Stefanski: Draft picks are lifeblood of organization

2️⃣ DeMarcco Hellams is the next man up on the Falcons’ depth chart at safety. A seventh-round pick in 2023 who’s primarily been a special-teamer this season, Hellams said Wednesday he’s ready for more defensive snaps — and his running mate, Xavier Watts, is confident he’ll handle it well.

”‘Marcco is very fierce, and he likes to hit,” Watts said. “The way he plays, he’s out there trying to knock people’s head off. He’s not like the biggest guy, not the smallest, but he’s fierce and he wants to go hit people.”

3️⃣ The Falcons signed Jake Moody off the Baltimore Ravens’ practice squad Tuesday. A third-round pick in 2023 by the San Francisco 49ers, Moody rebounded from a rocky 2½ years out west by making 19 of his last 21 tries across stints with the Ravens, Chicago Bears and Washington Commanders.

“You do all the film study and you go back to when you’ve studied him when he was coming out,” Stefanski said, “Everybody put our heads together and looked at him, the player. Now, we’re getting to know him.”

Aye, aye, cap’n!

Bates was a four-time captain in Atlanta. Folk was also a captain. It’s the first time in at least a decade the Falcons have parted ways with a captain during the season. They lost two in two days.

So, what happens next? Stefanski told his players in Wednesday’s meeting that everybody needs to step up leadershipwise.

As for the captain status, that goes back to the next highest vote-getters from the initial poll in the preseason.

“We’ll replace those guys as captains, and I’ll make that announcement to the team later in the week,” Stefanski said. “The truth is, in football you lose guys because of injury. You can lose them because of a trade or because of guys getting cut. That’s just the reality of football. So, it’s our job and coaches’ jobs, players’ jobs. We’ve got to step up.”

Mahomes, Walker spearhead Chiefs offensive attack

Stefanski didn’t want to spend much time discussing Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes, perhaps because there aren’t enough superlatives that aptly fit the two-time Most Valuable Player and three-time Super Bowl champion.

“You guys don’t need me to talk about how good he is,” Stefanski said. “He’s a great, great, great player.”

• After tearing his ACL last season, Mahomes recovered fast enough to play Week 1.
• He’s enjoyed another strong season, passing for 2,037 yards, 14 touchdowns and four interceptions while completing 67.3% of his attempts in eight games.

But the newfound engine to the Chiefs’ offense is running back Kenneth Walker III, the reigning Super Bowl MVP with the Seattle Seahawks who’s flourished during his first year in Kansas City.

Walker has rushed for 872 yards and is averaging 5.5 yards per carry, both of which rank second in the NFL.

“He’s a tough guy to get on the ground,” Stefanski said. “He’s got a great combination of size, speed that’s legit. A jump cut, excellent contact balance. Really good scheme fit for what they’re asking him to do. He can catch the ball out of the backfield.

“And then you add him to that offense already with Pat Mahomes and all the things that they’ve done over the years, it’s a really difficult scheme to defend.”

Injury report

Here’s the Falcons’ injury report from Wednesday’s practice.

Full participation

• N/A

Limited participation

• LB Divine Deablo (forearm)

Did not participate

• WR Zachariah Branch (hamstring)
• DT Gervon Dexter Sr. (illness)
• DE James Pearce Jr. (back)
• DE Za’ Darius Smith (not injury related — resting player)
• LB Josh Woods (ankle)

What I’m looking forward to, Week 10 edition

I’m excited to watch Mahomes play in person. He’s a magician, and I enjoy magic tricks — the Bengals’ offense did quite a few of them last week, too, which made for a source of amusement in a difficult afternoon for the Falcons.

Also, you know the phenomenon where teams suddenly play better the week after they fire their coach?

A similar thing happened to the Tennessee Titans when they traded star defensive tackle Jeffery Simmons to the Bears earlier this season — they went on the road and nearly beat the Bengals, falling in overtime despite one of the larger pregame point spreads this season.