PITTSBURGH — For three quarters Sunday, the Atlanta Falcons looked like a team that had no business hanging around Acrisure Stadium. Their top two quarterbacks were out. They were starting Cooper Rush on short notice. They were sloppy, penalty-prone, and kicking field goals they should have converted from closer range.
They were also within a score of beating the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Then T.J. Watt jumped a swing pass, stumbled, got back up, and ran 35 yards the other way. Pittsburgh won 20-13. Atlanta left with a one-score loss that felt both narrow and inevitable.
A game that never quite got clean
The final margin was seven points. The afternoon was messier than that.
The two sides combined for 16 accepted penalties, three fumbles, and three missed field goals. The Steelers’ offense managed only 264 yards and went 3-for-13 on third down. The Falcons were worse on third down, converting 2 of 12, and generated just 238 yards of total offense. Neither team looked like it had spent August in midseason form.
Pittsburgh still found enough. Aaron Rodgers, opening what he has called his final NFL season, completed 24 of 40 passes for 221 yards and a touchdown to Pat Freiermuth. Chris Boswell added field goals of 43 and 28 yards. The running game never materialized — Jaylen Warren and Rico Dowdle combined for 61 yards on 18 carries — but the defense did not need it.
Robinson almost carried Atlanta by himself
Bijan Robinson was the Falcons’ entire offense.
He rushed 21 times for 83 yards and caught eight passes for 90 yards and the team’s only touchdown, a 23-yard swing pass in the first quarter in which he split three defenders and finished in the end zone. Those 173 yards from scrimmage accounted for most of Atlanta’s 238. Drake London had two catches for 29 yards. Almost nobody else touched the ball.
The score at that moment was 7-3 Falcons. A Jaylen Warren fumble near Pittsburgh’s 30 had set the drive up. For a stretch, the visitors looked ready to steal a road opener that the injury report said they should have lost by two scores.
They could not stay there.
Nick Folk later made field goals of 51 and 43 yards, cutting the deficit to 13-10 late in the third and 20-13 in the fourth. Two other kicks did not go. The offense never found a second act beyond Robinson. Rush finished 12 of 22 for 143 yards, one touchdown, and two interceptions. Both picks became Pittsburgh touchdowns.
The play that decided it
Early in the fourth quarter, Atlanta still trailed only 13-10. Rush tried a quick throw to Robinson in the flat. Watt, coming off what was widely described as a down year by his standards, stepped in front of it.
He picked the ball at the Falcons’ 35, slipped on the turf, popped up, and scored. The extra point made it 20-10 with 14:05 remaining. Watt also finished with two sacks and three tackles for loss. Cam Heyward batted passes at the line. Jaquan Brisker had the other interception, which led to Freiermuth’s touchdown. Pittsburgh sacked Rush four times.
Folk’s 43-yarder made it a one-score game again. Atlanta never got the ball back with a realistic chance. Rodgers completed three passes on a late drive that burned the final 4:16. Warren’s 9-yard run near the two-minute warning finished it.
New coaches, old problems
The game was a first for both sidelines in different ways. Mike McCarthy’s Steelers debut was a win, if not a statement. Kevin Stefanski’s Falcons debut was a loss that looked a lot like Atlanta’s recent Week 1 history: the franchise has now dropped nine openers in 11 years.
Stefanski’s postgame assessment was blunt. It is hard to win on the road, he said, when a team does the things Atlanta did — penalties, missed kicks, turnovers, a third-string quarterback asked to operate on a short week after Tua Tagovailoa’s back flared and Michael Penix Jr. remained out with a knee injury. Both QBs could be available as soon as Week 2 against Carolina, according to reporting around the team.25
Until then, the tape is simple. Robinson was a one-man show. The defense kept Atlanta close enough that a single mistake would decide it. Watt supplied the mistake and the answer in the same play.
A seven-point loss on the road, against a home favorite, with a backup quarterback, is not a collapse. It is also not a moral victory. The Falcons were close enough to believe. They were not clean enough to finish.