Rich: What Bijan & the Atlanta Falcons Showed in Their MNF Beatdown of the New Orleans Saints

Rich had the Falcons. Then he turned on the broadcast, saw Steve Gleason and Drew Brees in the Superdome, heard the crowd, and texted the NFL GameDay Morning group to say he was switching to the Saints. Three snaps later, Bijan Robinson made him regret it.

The switch was emotional, and Rich owned that. Twenty years ago he was in the building for the reopening of the Superdome after Hurricane Katrina, sent by NFL Network with Mooch and Marshall Faulk to do NFL Total Access ahead of Monday Night Football. "It was the loudest I've ever heard a stadium in my 20-plus years," he said. With so many people from that night back to commemorate it, he figured "there was no chance the Saints were going to lose that game."

What he forgot, despite having Robinson in the one fantasy league he wants to win most, was that Atlanta has "the biggest home run hitter Atlanta's seen since Chipper Jones." Robinson ripped off a 59-yard touchdown three snaps in. "The crowd that was going nuts gets quiet," Rich said. "That's why he's a first-team All-Pro." He called Robinson a tone-setter, the kind of back who can turn a simple run to the left side into six, as he nearly did in Green Bay the week before.

Rich stretched the Chipper comparison as far as it would go. Robinson is "a switch-hitter, too, you could say. He can hit from both sides of the field." He apologized to TJ for bringing up the Brave he hates most, then joked that there's a reason Chipper named his kid Shea.

A home run hitter alone does not win in that environment, though. Rich said you also need a defense, and Atlanta's, with Jeff Ulbrich dialing up the plays, showed up. "If the Atlanta Falcons defense can play like that and Bijan shows up as he is now frequently doing, that right there is a winning formula in the National Football League in 2026," he said. "Especially if you've got a quarterback that has a big heart and an arm to go with it."

That quarterback is Michael Penix. Rich keeps bringing up Cooper Rush, who he said is basically the only backup quarterback to look "beyond unusable" this year, in a season where Atlanta, Washington and Chicago have all had to dig down to third-string quarterbacks for meaningful snaps. Penix came back from his knee injury to start a Thursday night game in Green Bay and then a Monday night game in the Superdome on one of the biggest nights in that building's history. "To do that in back-to-back weeks is beyond impressive," Rich said. The message to him, as Rich framed it: "We're starting 0 and 2, but we're in Lambeau Field, and we're in the Superdome," with the whole country watching.

The rest of the offense came along. Drake London, who was seen barking at anybody he could on the sideline in Week 2, has "come to the fore." Kyle Pitts caught some passes. Jahan Dotson caught what Rich called a basically game-sealing touchdown. "Atlanta, playing like this, has a top-five offense in the NFL," he said. "That's a fact."

Penix kept his own review brief. Asked how his first NFL start in the Superdome went, he said, "It went great. Obviously, we got the results we wanted. It went real good." Rich loved it. "He's just like a sweetheart, right?" Asked about returning from the knee and getting to 2-2, Penix needed a moment to find the word, then landed on it. "Not satisfied," he said. "We still got a long season." And the plan from here: "We got to keep stacking."

That stacking is real. Rich noted the Falcons had the fewest points in the NFL in the first two weeks and the most in the two weeks since. There was also a fantasy subplot. Rich had seen a post about someone who spent big on "the wrong B. Robinson." On Monday, that person was happy: Brian Robinson scored three touchdowns to Bijan's two.

Next is Baltimore on Sunday Night Football, Atlanta's third straight standalone primetime game, this time at home. Lamar Jackson's status is the question. Ian Rapoport reported an outside chance he plays, and the table agreed that, with all due respect to Snoop Huntley, the Falcons would rather face Huntley than Lamar. The headline for now, as Rich put it: "Season saved in Atlanta."